Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Criterion Channel has Daisies, Something Different (1963) and Pearls of the Deep (1966 anthology film, she directed one of the segments, "Automat Svět").

Daisies, Something Different/A Bagful of Fleas, Traps and Fruit of Paradise all available from Second Run DVD:

http://www.secondrundvd.com/index.html

The Image Book (Godard, 2018) - 10/10 -------- I saw this three times and would've gone again and again if it hadn't left after two weeks

I love this :) Really want to see it again.

Guillermin - Skyjacked - 1972 - 5/10
JH Lewis - My Name is Julia Ross - 1945 - 6/10
JH Lewis - So Dark the Night - 1946 - 6/10 -- amazingly shot for the time, but that script, oof
Quine - Pushover - 1954 - 8/10
Quine - Drive a Crooked Road - 1954 - 6/10
Hilton Edwards - Return to Glennascaul - 1953 - 3/10
Cohen - God Told Me To - 1976 - 4/10 -- my first cohen and i can't get past the b-movie aspects, e.g. the main character saying his internal narration out loud
Castle - 13 Ghosts - 1960 - 3/10

April:

The Earth Dies Screaming (Fisher, 1964) 7/10
The Panic in Needle Park (Schatzberg, 1971) 8/10
Lords of Chaos (Åkerlund, 2018) 5/10
Us (Peele, 2019) 8/10
Happy as Lazzaro (Rohrwacher, 2018) 8/10
Un Chant d'Amour (Genet, 1950) 8/10
The Revenge of Frankenstein (Fisher, 1958) 7/10
The Sisters Brothers (Audiard, 2018) 7/10
The Evil of Frankenstein (Francis, 1964) 6/10
Born Yesterday (Cukor, 1950) 7/10
Decision at Sundown (Boetticher, 1957)
Frankenstein Must be Destroyed (Fisher, 1969) 7/10
Crime and Punishment (Kaurismäki, 1983) 7/10
Trilogy of Terror (Curtis, 1975) 5/10
3:10 to Yuma (Dawes, 1957) 7/10
Greta (Jordan, 2018) 5/10
Pet Sematary (Kölsch and Widymer, 2019) 6/10
A Fistful of Dollars (Leone, 1964) 8/10
Calamari Union (Kaurismäki, 1985) 6/10
The Phantom of the Opera (Fisher, 1962) 6/10
Shazam! (Sandberg, 2019) 4/10
Avengers: Endgame (Russo Bros, 2019) 7/10

The Image Book (Godard, 2018) - 10/10 -------- I saw this three times and would've gone again and again if it hadn't left after two weeks

I love this :) Really want to see it again.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, April 30, 2019 6:42 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

After I saw it I got Histoire(s) du Cinema and this shorts collection (including Origins of the 21st Century) and realized how much of The Image Book is made up of material cherrypicked from both. HDC is so, so amazing.

Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965) 8/10
Private Life (Jenkins, 2018) 6/10
Juliet, Naked (Peretz, 2018) 7/10
So Dark The Night (Lewis, 1946) 5/10
Isn't It Romantic (Strauss-Schulson, 2019) 7/10
Dark Waters (De Toth, 1944) 8/10
An Evening With Beverley Luff Lin (Hosking, 2018) 3/10
Big Lebowski (Coen Bros, 1998) 9/10
The Wife (Runge, 2017) 6/10
Ralph Breaks the Internet (Johnston & Moor, 2018) 8/10
The Ghost & Mrs Muir (Mankiewicz, 1947) 9/10
Dogman (Garrone, 2018) 6/10
Under the Silver Lake (Mitchell, 2018) 7/10
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Anderson, 2003) 9/10
The Rider (Zhao, 2017) 7/10
Love, Simon (Berlanti, 2017) 7/10
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Audiard, 2005) 8/10
Visages, Villages (Varda & JR, 2018) 8/10

Sinner's Holiday (Adophi, 1930) 7/10
Based on the 1929 production of a play, Penny Arcade: Jolson bought the rights and insisted that kiddos James Cagney and Joan Blondell, though complete unknowns in Hwood, be the leads. She's out of his league, but further inspires what one Cag biographer called "an immaculate vision of overgrown juvenile delinquency", albeit one who correctly perceives the limitations of carnival life in the Depression (his mother, played as immaculate battleaxe by Lucille La Verne, runs the concessions like nobody's business, but is the only one who doesn't know about her favorite kid's shady ways).
Yadda yadda, little popinjay C. suddenly collapses, blubbering into her apron. "Then you really was mixed up in that liquor racket," cpncludes Ma Einstein. "YES! YES!"
Now, there is an uppity ex-convict carnie, Angel, who's often like, "Hey---Handsone." And "Don't sweat it---Good Lookin'," to guys he really shouldn't messin' with--but his likely fate is further complicated by his relationship with Cagney's kid sister: "Aw I'm nerts about ya kid." It's even declared out loud that someday, some way, true love may hit the big time: a house on Coney Island! Way up from this burg.

That SUSPIRIA remake is on Amazon Prime now. It's 2 1/2 hours long; I lasted 45 minutes. There's nothing there.

I wish I saw that when it came out, I'm not into the original but this one looked interesting.... like I don't fuck with Blade Runner but 2049 was amazing imo

don’t know if I can recommend it to anyone, it was very strange (and long), but I really loved it

I loved it as well.

The Lost City of Z (Gray, 2016) 7/10
Diary of a Chambermaid (Bunuel, 1964) 6/10
The Thing (Carpenter, 1982) 6/10
Belle du Jour (Bunuel, 1967) 8/10
Sicilia (Straub, Huillet, 1999) 8/10
The Milky Way (Bunuel, 1969) 7/10
Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965) 7/10
Maborosi (Kore-eda, 1995) 8/10
Vagabond (Varda, 1985) 8/10
Tristana (Bunuel, 1970) 6/10
Diamantino (Abrantes, Schmidt, 2018) 7/10
*Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Alfredson, 2011) 8/10
Hue and Cry (Crichton, 1947) 7/10
Like Father, Like Son (Kore-eda, 2013) 6/10

Wot a Night (Foster & Stallings, 1931)
Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! (Ising, 1931)
A Cat's Life (1920)
Alias French Gertie (Archainbaud, 1930)
Fatty and Mabel's Simple Life (Arbuckle, 1915)
The Fiancés of the Bridge Mac Donald (Varda, 1961)
Daphnia (Painlevé, 1928)
High Life (Denis, 2018)
Cœur Fidèle (Epstein, 1923)
Passing Fancy (Ozu, 1933)

those are some underwhelmed Bunuel ratings, devvvine

Nightmare Alley (Goulding, 1947): no rating since I haven't seen the whole thing in years, though the last 30 minutes surfaced last night, and a chunk from the midsection (or anyway where he discovers that the soon-to-be-shady lady shrink records all of her sessions) of this morning's latest rerun. Did finally occur to me that the psych witch goes with NA creator-novelist William Linsday Gresham;s involvement in what may have still been Dianetics---yadda yadda also the tacked-on hopeful ending also made the whole thing more of a noir loop, suggesting affinities-to=come with an earlier relationship. Oh yeah, and the way Stan---the dangerously prodigious prodigal orphan and child of the system and the Depression and then some, way back in there---struggles to deal with all these weird normies, suggests something on the run beyond and behind contemporary pop-media formulations of the psychopath and bad seed etc.

The Lineup (Siegel, 1956)
*Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957)
Detour (Ulmer, 1945)
*Avengers - Infinity War (Russo Bros., 2018)
Avengers - Endgame (Russo Bros., 2019)
The Virgin Suicides (Coppola, 1999)
My Name Is Julia Ross (Lewis, 1945)
Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
Murder by Contract (Lerner, 1958)
The Burglar (Wendkos, 1957)
Dinner at Eight (Cukor, 1933)
Take a Chance (Harold Lloyd short - Goulding, 1918)

3 Faces (Panahi, 2018)
Ash is the Purest White (Zhang-Ke, 2019)

Loved the panahi

damn! I just got 5 minutes into Ash is the Purest White last night and my router that was streaming it to the tv went down and I was too tired to sort it out.

All the Colors of the Dark (Martino, 1972)- surprisingly, not my favorite of the two Polanski-esque cult-centered gialli I watched recently (neither beat out Perfume of the Lady in Black, my favorite, but I will always at least check out this kind of thing). It's beautiful, has an amazing Bruno Nicolai score, but screenwriter (of this and about 40% of all giallo movies ever) Ernesto Gastaldi with his disinterest in psychology and simultaneous obsession with rational plotting is exactly the wrong match for this kind of material.

Short Night of Glass Dolls (Lado, 1971)- this, though! It's unrelentingly fucking grim and, Rosemary's Baby stuff aside, is more in line with American paranoia thrillers of the 70s than gialli (the Prague setting is a big part of this).

*Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)- it halloween
OK fine; it's instructive to watch this again after seeing Black Christmas for the first time, a comparison that doesn't do Halloween too many favors, especially with Black Christmas's relatively naturalistic teen/young adult dialogue. But it's also easier to see how new and exciting and disturbing Michael Myers' onscreen presence is, especially in scenes early on where he's hiding behind shrubs or lurking in clotheslines; there's a reason he's credited as The Shape. Too bad the franchise completely shit the bed almost immediately!

The Butterfly Murders (Hark, 1979)- Tsui Hark's first film; it's a wuxia murder mystery with some really marvelous horror elements. This is an area I'm almost totally unfamiliar with, so it's a shame to see how little care has been taken in English-speaking territories with this film; the copy on Prime is cropped at the wrong aspect ratio, going green and has awful subtitles. On the plus side, at least it's on Prime...

*Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Petri, 1970)- Part of my Petri thing, which is now also turning into a Gian Maria Volonte thing. I would give a finger for a restored copy of Todo Modo right now. One of my favorite films.

Halloween II (Rosenthal/Carpenter, 1981)- Dogshit. Dean Cundey means it looks all right, Donald Pleasance (already in demented camp mode) and Jamie Lee Curtis (given nothing whatsoever to do) ensure some sense of continuity with the original; it does its best to try and retroactively make the original worse with its pointless twist, characters present for no reason other than to get got in inventive and stupid ways (and made unbearable so we don't have any reaction to their deaths) and Donald Pleasance's total inability to pronounce the word "Samhain"

*Theorem (Pasolini, 1968)- The Morricone score, Terence Stamp's extremely tight pants, Pasolini's total command of tone and pacing, it's grown on me a lot since the last time I saw this. Even kind of liked Ninetto Davoli this time, which is usually a hard sell for me.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)- Points for trying, unlike the last one. It's still bad but it's bad in interesting ways; Dan O'Herlihy is fun (and can pronounce "Samhain") and the credits sequence is glorious. Kind of interesting how plot elements show up in later Carpenter films (thinking specifically of They Live and In the Mouth of Madness here). The lead, whose name I do not care enough to look up, is a total charisma vacuum and has the heaviest Rowsdower vibe I have ever seen. I can't even make a "divorced dad energy" joke here because that is literally his entire deal. He's just the worst, though.

For a Few Dollars More (Leone, 1965)- First time for this one. Not as elegantly plotted as Fistful, but it didn't have Hammett and/or Kurosawa as a template. More/better Volonte, ludicrous grand guignol violence, and the most hilariously stacked lineup of villains (Klaus Kinski! Luigi Pistilli! Mario Brega, again!), but what mostly stuck with me was this jaw-dropping Morricone cue. It's still based on the same kind of fusion of folk melodies/instrumentation and electric distortion as Fistful (and most of his other Western scores) but with scoring techniques I would have associated more with horror movies of the time (not just that blaring church organ, either; there are some creepy glissandi I would have never expected from Morricone).

Just realized that makes me sound lukewarm on Theorem, which I absolutely am not, I think it's a masterpiece

April, all but one on a television

Please, Kill Mr. Kinski (Schmoeller 1999) [short, tipped off from this thread]
Cellular (Ellis, Cohen, Morgan 2004)
Logan's Run (Anderson, Goodman after Nolan and Johnson 1976 ) [DCP]
* Heathers (Lehmann, Waters 1989)
The Ten Commandments (DeMille, MacKenzie, Lasky Jr, Gariss, Frank 1956)
Sadie (Megan Griffiths 2018)
* Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh, Rebecca Blunt 2017)
Gilbert (Berkeley 2018)
Like Me (Mockler 2018)

*Circle of Deceit (1981, Schlondorff) 9/10
*Spite Marriage (1929, Sedgwick/Keaton) 8/10
Full of Life (1956, Quine) 8/10
The Mule (2018, Eastwood) 7/10
Fear City (1984, Ferrara) 4/10
*Macario (1960, Gavaldón) 8/10
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018, Jenkins) 6/10
*Pasolini (2014, Ferrara) 8/10
Cœur fidèle aka The Unfaithful Heart (1923, Epstein) 8/10
*The Addiction (1995, Ferrara) 7/10

Paisan (Rossellini, 1946) - 6/10
She Hate Me (Lee, 2004) - 6/10
Dressed to Kill (De Palma, 1980) - 9/10
Germany: Year Zero (Rossellini, 1948) - 6/10
Innocence Unprotected (Makavejev, 1968) - 5/10
Almayer’s Folly (Akerman, 2011) - 4/10
Capricious Summer (Menzel, 1968) - 7/10
Dishonored (Sternberg, 1931) - 10/10
A Film Like Any Other (Godard, 1968) - 5/10
Vladimir and Rosa (Godard & Gorin, 1971) - 5/10
Sweetie (Campion, 1989) - 4/10
In Which We Serve (Lean, 1942) - 7/10
The Mothman Prophecies (Pellington, 2002) - 6/10
Shanghai Express (Sternberg, 1932) - 10/10
Se7en (Fincher, 1995) - 7/10
Magnolia (Anderson, 1999) - 3/10
Underworld (Sternberg, 1927) - 8/10
Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965) - 10/10
Blonde Venus (Sternberg, 1932) - 9/10
The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946) - 9/10
The Scarlet Empress (Sternberg, 1934) - 8/10
The Overnight (Brice, 2015) - 8/10
The Devil is a Woman (Sternberg, 1935) - 8/10
The Player (Altman, 1992) - 10/10
The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1937) - 10/10
The Joke (Jireš, 1969) - 7/10
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940) - 6/10
The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky, 1986) - 7/10
The Quiet Man (Ford, 1952) - 8/10

The 51st State (2003) 4/10
The Love Witch (2016) 6/10
*Hot Fuzz (2007) 6/10
A Film With Me In It (2008) 6/10
*The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013) 8/10
Avengers: Endgame (2019) 5/10
*Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) 9/10
John Wick (2014) 7/10
Shampoo (1975) 7/10
Loveless (2017) 8/10

Documentaries

Prohibition (2011) 7/10
Rush : Beyond The Lighted Stage (2010) 6/10
The Stone Roses: Made of Stone (2013) 7/10

TV:

Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)

MUBI:

The Patriot Game (Arthur Maccaig, 1979)

Cinema:

Diamantno (Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, 2018)

Loved the panahi

― milkshake chuk (wins), Monday, 6 May 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agree, at first I thought that it went off the boil once the quest finds its resolution but actually a wonderful thing about it is how it feels like the camera hangs out with these people they went to visit, and how we listened to them and looked at them for no particular reason or benefit other than to be with them.

Ah fuck I missed the patriot game. I watched the image you missed at the film fest last year, did you catch that one?

Sadly I wasn't able to catch it at the cinema or MUBI. The Maccraig was really good, lots of footage that speaks for itself - and I loved the soundtrack as well.

The clips in the later film looked good

I need to sit myself in front of mubi more often, cinema has been a bit shit for me this year and all this good stuff just slowly drops off their now showing page unseen because it’s too easy for me just to illegally watch old twilight zone eps on cyb3rfl1x on my bezos stick

Lot in Sodom (Watson & Webber, 1933)
The Frozen North (Cline & Keaton, 1922)
A Modern Cinderella (Mack, 1932)
Gai Dimanche (Berr et Tati, 1935)
*Burning (Lee, 2018)
Sensation Hunters (Vidor, 1933)
Red-Haired Alibi (Cabanne, 1932)
The Image Book (Godard, 2018)

Aniara, the sci-fi existential crisis film, is worth missing.

Speaking of Mubi, I don't know if it's there in every country, but if people can see Madeline's Madeline, they really need to do so. One of my top three films from last year.

And yeah, Aniara isn't that good. The book is cool, though

Glad I skipped out on that for an open bar Fifth Element screening, then (yeah, ok, lateral move, but I love that dumbass movie and the venue)

The Last of Sheila (Ross, 1973)- a nasty, black-hearted treat. Highest recommendation

*John Wick (Stahelski & Leitch, 2014)- Liked this much more on second viewing (and I was already positively disposed); the soundtrack has not grown on me with the sole exception of the Kaleida song used to soundtrack the Red Circle setpiece, and I'm really hoping the subsequent films are a little less buttrock

*The Fifth Element (Besson, 1997)- JEAN-BAPTISTE

EMANUEL

ZORG

5/5 I will be taking no questions at this time

*The Abominable Dr. Phibes (Fuest, 1971)- the announcement of a Witchfinder General remake produced by Nicolas Winding Refn (please no) had me thinking about Vincent Price and camp this week; Phibes is almost deliriously camp (or kitsch, ok) film, especially its use of period music and Price's incredible throat acting skills, all that stone-faced jaw-gurning and gesticulating while his prerecorded voice drones on about NINE ETERNITIES IN DOOM, but it's also the first time I really paid attention to Basil Kirchin's score. I'm mostly familiar with his home electronic recordings thanks to Trunk's reissues; here he's doing fairly conventional film scoring but it's lush and sad and weirdly affecting.

*Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Martino, 1972)- maybe Martino's nastiest giallo? Though I haven't seen his poliziotteschi hybrid The Suspicious Death of a Minor yet. Also the first one I saw, and it's been interesting to return to it knowing it's basically cast with a Martino brothers repertory company (that, and seeing Luigi Pistilli in other roles since, like his breakthrough in For a Few Dollars More). Thick gothic atmosphere you don't really get from other Martinos, even All the Colors of the Dark, aided by atmospheric locations (the same villa as Elio Petri's A Quiet Place in the Country, if I recall correctly) and Bruno Nicolai's Dies Irae-referencing score. Which is a bit Goblin in places as well; it's Martino's most Argentoesque work, and a better film than Argento's own adaptation of "The Black Cat."

The Last of Sheila = murder mystery penned by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins (secretly an item around that time)

Yeah, I wasn't sure how familiar people would be with it (I have a sense of it as a cult movie but I don't really know anyone offline who cares so I'm often worried I'm overexplaining common knowledge). It's really bracingly amoral for a murder mystery, too- I texted my parents (big Agatha Christie fans) about halfway through to say "you might like this" and some 45 minutes later to say "WAIT NO DISREGARD"

apparently it grew out of a parlor game AP & SS participated in with their friends

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Wiene, 1920) 8/10
Bitter Victory (Ray, 1957) 9/10
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel, 1972) 7/10
High Life (Denis, 2018) 9/10
*In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950) 10/10
*The Aviator's Wife (Rohmer, 1981) 9/10
The Student of Prague (Galeen, 1926) 7/10
Passport to Pimlico (Cornelius, 1949) 6/10
John Wick: Chapter 2 (Stahelski, 2017) 4/10
That Obscure Object of Desire (Bunuel, 1977) 7/10

Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma, 1974) - 8/10
No Sad Songs for Me (Maté, 1950) - 5/10
Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (Fassbinder, 1972-73) - 10/10
Le Vent d’Est (Godard, Gorin, Martin; 1970) - 5/10
Poto and Cabengo (Gorin, 1980) - 9/10
Basic Training (Wiseman, 1971) - 9/10
Routine Pleasures (Gorin, 1986) - 8/10
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Altman, 1982) - 6/10
My Crasy Life (Gorin, 1992) - 9/10
*The Image Book (Godard, 2018) - 10/10

Bisbee '17 is a singular work of brilliance; highly highly recommended.

Conversely, I kinda thought it was mostly a pale copy of The Act of Killing and that kind of documentary

Act of Killing didn't resonate the same way with me. Go figure.

Shrugs all around then.

The Act of Killing is great on its own but is significantly bolstered by the existence of The Look of Silence

Definitely. And there's no such thing for Bisbee' 17, or most of the other documentaries based on people doing reconstructions.

Would be curious to hear of more “that kind of documentaries” ie films in which participants in/adjacent to an event recreate the moment

I'll get back to you on that, forksclovetofu, I have the book on 'Interventionist' documentary at home. Small book, written by a Danish guy, has the whole list.

Meanwhile:

Fog of War (Morris)
The Unknown Known (Morris)
Man on Wire (Marsh)
Hoop Dreams (James)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (Gelb)
Knock Down the House (Lears)
Padre Padrone (Taviani & Taviani)
The Night of the Shooting Stars (Taviani & Taviani)
Kaos (Taviani & Taviani)
Caesar Must Die (Taviani & Taviani)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Olmi)
Carmen (Rosi)
The Night Porter (Cavani)*
Suspiria (Argento)
Happy as Lazzaro (Rohrwacher)
Prototype (Williams)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan)*
Spring Fever (Lou Ye)
The Assassin (Hou)*
Kasaba (Ceylan)
Clouds of May (Ceylan)
Winter Sleep (Ceylan)*
The Wild Pear Tree (Ceylan)
The One and Only (Bier)
Love Is All You Need (Bier)
Crimson Peak (del Toro)
Babel (Iñárritu)*
Biutiful (Iñárritu)*
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Lee Jones)*
You and the Night (Gonzales)
Knife + Heart (Gonzales)
Ikiru (Kurosawa)
Sunset (Nemes)
The Mill of Good Luck (Iliu)
Burning (Lee)*
Pokémon Detective Picachu (Letterman)