Last (x) movies you saw (II)

O Lucky Man (1973) 2/5
I Walk Alone (1947) 4/5
* Kingpin (1996) 4/5
Light Sleeper (1992) 2.5/5
Prince of Darkness (1987) 3/5
Marie Antoinette (2006) 3.5/5
ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas (2019) 3/5
Color Out of Space (2019) 2.5/5
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) 4/5
* The Naked Kiss (1964) 3/5
Field N----s (2015) 3.5/5
* Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) 4/5

smdh at that O Lucky Man rating

We've had a lot of movie nights lately. Because everyone liked Knives Out they asked for more like that, so I queued up some of the usual suspects: Murder By Death, Sleuth, Deathtrap, etc. But last night we watched Murder on the Orient Express, which I'd read but never seen, and ooof, I cannot believe they made it through that. It's sooooooo slow, and about an hour too long, and everyone struggled to understand everybody's broad accents. I've actually never seen Sleuth, or Murder By Death, so I'm wondering if it's a mistake to suggest either of them.

Anyway, the night before I showed them Moonrise Kingdom, and everyone liked that one.

which Murder on the Orient Express? the '74 one has some camp/upholstery value.

'74. Camp is one thing, slooooooooooow camp sort of hampers the enjoyment.

It's sooooooo slow, and about an hour too long, and everyone struggled to understand everybody's broad accents. I've actually never seen Sleuth, or Murder By Death, so I'm wondering if it's a mistake to suggest either of them.

Death On The Nile and Evil Under The Sun are the Agatha Christies that Johnson especially likes and recommends (both have Ustinov as Poirot). Sleuth is fantastic, and is directly Easter-egged in Knives Out. Deathtrap is basically a Sleuth tribute band, so separate them as far as possible and make sure to watch Sleuth first.

Johnson also especially recommends The Last Of Sheila (a 1973 collab between Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins) and Gosford Park for more-in-this-vein type viewing.



Murder By Death is a parody of country-house mysteries and of various specific page-to-screen detectives, so your audience probably isn't best served by going straight to it, especially if it's your nuclear family. (If you think the kids can sit through The Thin Man, though, take a swing at it.)

imo a good order to mix up styles and settings:

The Last Of Sheila
Sleuth
Evil Under The Sun
The Thin Man
Gosford Park
Brick (for another Johnson pastiche with mystery)
Death On The Nile
After The Thin Man
Deathtrap

last of sheila is very good as a mystery, not so good as a movie

It's fun, and gets carried a long way by the cast evidently having a great time living in the south of France together for many months.

We have Gosford Park (which I've seen and like) ready, plus Sleuth, Deathtrap (which yeah, I've heard is Sleath redux) and Death on the Nile (if we want to go more Christie). I've seen Brick; It's been so long but I'm not sure I want to see it again, and for the kids it's another one that riffs on movies (or types of movies) they've never seen. I've heard mixed things about The Last of Sheila, yeah, and dunno if my kids will be into the Thin Man series. One is juuuuuust young enough that b&w movies are like work.

fwiw the cleanse them of Orient Express I'm going to show them One Cut of the Dead tonight, which if they can make it past the first 20 or so minutes I'm sure they will love (as would anyone).

lol "Sleath."

i gotta admit that even though i have hundreds of movies on deck to watch, i can't seem to keep my attention anywhere for longer than an hour if that.

Last Of Sheila is definitely a great Knives Out connection for the tricksiness of the mystery, too.

I threw Brick in because kids don't need to understand that it's riffing on anything to get it - either way, it's a high school movie with a weird tone. Murder By Death is nine direct parodies.

Dunno how old your kids are, but Clue was probably my sister and I’s most watched movie from about ages 8-10.

Also (again, not knowing the demographics), I would think that kids would dig The Thin Man more that Gosford Park or Brick.

Kids are 12 and 15, so old enough for Brick and Gosford. And they've seen plenty of Clue!

A Shot in the Dark is one you could try.

One Cut of the Dead won me back into everyone's good graces, which is good news, because if I picked another one they didn't like I'm afraid they would have gone with "Cats." Which is inevitable, I suppose.

i'm with Edmund Wilson on the murder mystery: "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?"

MAD mag Orient Express parody is wonderful. don't think it's online.

Watching minute-long Lumiere bros films to drive up my Letterboxd stats.

One Cut is great fun.

Latest hits are:
Recorder: The Marian Stokes Project - fascinating but overlong, driven a bit much by her son's agenda i think.
Fantastic Fungi - fun but mostly introductory stuff. if you've never heard of Paul Stamets though, by all means, go see this ASAP.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? - i haven't seen this in over a decade and I still know most of the script by heart. goddamn, this holds up!
Metropolis - with live accompaniment by the Metropolitan Ensemble... this was the last show I got to before the venues all shut down. It was wonderful.

lol coincidentally I recently started that Michael Pollen book about psychedelic mushrooms, and Stamets plays a big part early on. I don't know if he continues to play a big part, because folks like him seem so smart and so colorfully eccentric and yet, in the end, I just dgaf. I wish it was a book on mushrooms, period, rather than just psilocybin. Maybe it is! But I think I'm moving on.

Laura is a good noir/thriller

i'm with Edmund Wilson on the murder mystery: "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?"

you realise that Knives Out shows Who Killed Harlan Thrombey in the first twenty minutes of a 130 minute movie

it is, excellent book too xp

"Laura" is great, but I totally understand why my whole family might not want to watch it. The older movies get, great or no, the bigger the ask it becomes. A bit like making them listen to, say, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five. Some of the most essential music ever made, but I totally understand why a 15 or 12 (or 45) year old in 2020 might not want to hear it. On one hand, they might surprise me and go on a noir streak. On the other, I might lose their trust, which means weeks of shit and reality shows and "The Office." I've got to strike the right balance of quality and novelty and entertainment.

I think we're going for "Sleuth" tonight, which sounds like a sure thing, though I've never seen it.

I don’t know if it’s something the whole family would go for, but L’Assassin Habite au 21 is great fun.

Yeah, saw that for the first time recently and it's a hoot.

I love Clouzot, but I've never seen that. Is it on Criterion?

It is! Win!

Cinema (maybe for the last time for a v long time):

Vitalina Varela (Costa, 2019) - I realised halfway through that the look created by the artifical lamps with a contrast of near darkness is almost like the nearest you can get to a version of technicolour. The experience of seeing something like that, and it totally fits in the creation of this world where people are so broken they can't even pray anymore!

MUBI:

Our Town (Kawashima, 1956)
Oh Woe is me (Goadard, 1993) (The early 90s is a recovery of sorts for him - JLG is using his essay-film voice with Depardieu and that works a lot more than his second-wave back-to-the-city efforts like Carmen or Detective wwhere there is an overall lack of differentiation from his 1st wave efforts with the bigger stars...the caveat to all this: I haven't seen King Lear)
Leon Morin, Priest! (Melville, 1961) - the original hot priest!

One more from MUBI - To the Wonder (Malick, 2012)

Watched The Hunt. Fun lil flick, reminded me of Simon Pegg movies - hot fuzz, shaun of the dead.

The Vinterberg one?

Nono, that one seems real heavy. We watched the Blumhouse one from this year.

The Invisible Man (6.0)
Contagion (7.5)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (7.0)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (7.0)
The Way Back (6.5)
Lucien Freud: A Self Portrait (7.0)
----------------------------------------------------
School of Rock (9.0)
The Andromeda Strain (2008 remake – 6.0)
The Dreamers (5.5)
Something in the Air (7.0)
The Andromeda Strain (1971 original – 7.0)

The Freud documentary was the last film I saw in a theatre (about 15 other people--I sat away from everyone else), the Friday before last. Guessing that's it for six months at least.

Bit of a backlog here, sorry for the long post

the rest of February at home

Violette Nozière (Chabrol, 1978) - 8/10
The Third Lover (Chabrol, 1962) - 7/10
Tanner ’88 (Altman, 1988) - 9/10
Line of Demarcation (Chabrol, 1966) - 7/10
Woman on the Beach (Hong, 2006) - 9/10
*In a Year with 13 Moons (Fassbinder, 1978) - 10/10
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (Thompson, 1987) - 5/10

March at home

Oki’s Movie (Hong, 2010) - 7/10
A Girl Cut in Two (Chabrol, 2007) - 7/10
Dirty Like an Angel (Breillat, 1991) - 6/10
The Garden of Allah (Boleslawski, 1936) - 6/10
*Claire’s Camera (Hong, 2017) - 7/10
The Day After (Hong, 2017) - 7/10
The Pawnbroker (Lumet, 1964) - 8/10
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (Pollack, 1969) - 6/10
Tanner on Tanner (Altman, 2004) - 9/10
Conversation Piece (Visconti, 1974) - 9/10
Hustlers (Scafaria, 2019) - 8/10
Teorema (Pasolini, 1968) - 7/10
Detention (Kahn, 2011) - 7/10
Warrendale (King, 1967) - 8/10
Maidstone (Mailer, 1970) - 7/10
Hahaha (Hong, 2010) - 8/10

King of New York (Ferrara, 1990) - 8/10
Fail Safe (Lumet, 1964) - 10/10
*Nashville (Altman, 1975) - 10/10
78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene (Philippe, 2017) - 9/10
*Synecdoche, New York (Kaufman, 2008) - 10/10
Nostalgia for the Light (Guzmán, 2010) - 9/10
*The Image Book (Godard, 2018) - 10/10
*The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich, 1971) - 10/10
*The American Soldier (Fassbinder, 1970) - 8/10
*The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, 1935) - 10/10
Another Man’s Poison (Rapper, 1951) - 7/10
*The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice, 1973) - 6/10
*Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino, 1992) - 8/10
*Grindhouse (Rodriguez, Tarantino; 2007) - 8/10
*California Split (Altman, 1974) - 10/10
*The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Yates, 1973) - 9/10
*Scream (Craven, 1996) - 8/10
*Three Colors: Blue (Kieślowski, 1993) - 9/10
*They All Laughed (Bogdanovich, 1981) - 10/10

smdh at that O Lucky Man rating

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, March 17, 2020 9:29 PM (six days ago)

Chalk it up to pandemic headspace maybe but it was interminable and kinda made me want to die already.

something to look forward to maybe
http://filmfestival.tcm.com/special-home-edition/

Finally caught up with "Little Woods," thought it was strong. My family is so distrustful of my movie picks even though I keep coming through for them.

How did Sleuth go?

Saint Frances (Thompson, 2019) - Consistently surprisingly clever; brilliantly cast and only occasionally mawkish.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/movies/saint-frances-review.html

American Factory (Reichart, 2019) - A painful reminder that even post COVID, we are economically fucked. Did an excellent job of showing Americans the way that Chinese businessmen see us.
https://www.netflix.com/title/81090071

Human Nature (Bolt, 2019) - Great doc primer to gene therapy and CRISPR, provided some scant hope that we may yet outthink this fucking pandemic yet.
https://wondercollaborative.org/human-nature-documentary-film/

Last Breath (2019, Da Costa, Parkinson) - Over-attenuated doc on a terrifying story; an hour long cut would've been twice as good. As it is, the YOU ARE THERE security video goes a long way toward capturing the moment well enough to justify the investment.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80215139

War on Everyone (2016, McDonagh) - I loved Calvary and very much liked The Guard but wtf is this self-satisfied, hyperinflated Mark Millar wannabe horseshit? Every now and again, it finds a pulse and a clever turn of phrase, but way way way too dumb-smart for it's own good, no matter how many references McDonagh throws into the mix.

Buffaloed (2019, Wexler) - Really wanted this to be as smart as it wanted to be but unfortunately it is not. Hacky and predictable; bad acting and writing. I tapped out at 33 minutes.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B084SW7MTK/ref=atv_dl_rdr

Onward (2020, Pixar) - Definitely a nadir for the studio; I lasted about fifteen minutes.

War on everyone is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen, ban all mcdonaghs

They won't watch Sleuth! That's what I'm saying, 90% of my picks are ace, but one boring "Murder on the Orient Express" makes them not just distrustful of the genre but distrustful of me!

They won't watch Sleuth!

Boooooo :(

end of feb through to the quarantine era

Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren, Hammid, 1943) 10/10
The Delmarva Chicken of Tomorrow (Zimmerman, 2002) 4/10
Beach Fragments (Woodman, 1978) 8/10
Sodom (Sodom, Price) 1989
Woman is the Future of Man (Hong, 2004) 5/10
Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette, 1974) 10/10
First Name: Carmen (Godard, 1983) 10/10
One Hour With You (Lubitsch, 1932) 7/10
Stromboli (Rossellini, 1950) 9/10
Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch, 1932) 10/10
Olivia (Audry, 1951) 5/10
Detective (Godard, 1985) 7/10
Titan (Lutz, 2009) 5/10
Arabia (Lutz, 1991) 4/10
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Lubitsch, 1938) 10/10
*Magnificent Obsession (Sirk, 1954) 8/10
Depuis le Jour (Jarman, 1987) 4/10
The Garden (Jarman, 1990) 6/10
Winter Light (Bergman, 1963) 7/10
Colossal Youth (Costa, 2006) 10/10
2046 (Wong, 2004) 4/10
Oh, Woe is Me (Godard, 1993) 10/10
When You’re Lost in the Rain (Hopinka, 2019) 5/10
Lore (Hopinka, 2019) 7/10
Hoarders Without Boarders (Mack, 2018) 8/10
Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997) 7/10
L’Ami de Mon Amie (Rohmer, 1987) 8/10
*Kiki’s Delivery Service (Miyazaki, 10/10)
Press (FIRE) to Start (Woods, 2018) 3/10
Quelques fleurs pour un chant d’amour (Marti, 2006) 4/10
K (desert) (Devaux 2006) 6/10
Dellamorte Dellamorte Dellamore (Matarasso, 2004) 4/10
Unititled 1 (Godovannaya, 2005) 3/10
Dobrodošlica (Marc, 2018) 7/10
I Remember Sunderland (2017) 5/10
Hymen (Arcega, 2002) 7/10
Wasteland no. 1: Ardent Verdant (Mack, 2017) 7/10
Wasteland no. 2: Hardy, Hearty (Mack, 2019) 9/10
4 Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Rohmer, 1987) 6/10
The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (Story, 2016) 8/10
Journey to Italy (Rossellini, 1954) 10/10
Sherlock Jr. (Keaton, 1924) 9/10

Sodom (Sodom, Price) 1989 this is 9/10. v nsfw, v recommended.

I remember back in about 1975, when I was about 7, my parents were out to dinner and my babysitter put on Sleuth (which was on TV obv). It scared the living shit out of me. Something about the sadism of it was totally unnerving.

I think people wouls see the big twist fairly soon these days

still Olivier and Caine are very funny in it

and now it wd be v nice if you clowns took all these whodunits to another thread :)