Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Throne of blood is maybe a top ten all time for me

That movie is so good. Best Shakespeare adaptation?

It's one of the very best. I think the only other good one I've seen is King Lear (Peter Brook)

Oh, and Ran, of course.

Arabian Nights (Pasolini, 1974)
Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau, 1946)
A Kiss Before Dying (Oswald, 1956)
American Gigolo (Schrader, 1980)
It Chapter 2 (Muschietti, 2019)
Animal Crackers (Heerman, 1930)
The Underworld Story (Enfield, 1950)
Cléo from 5 to 7 (Varda, 1962)
Farewell, My Lovely (Richards, 1975)
The Hitch-Hiker (Lupino, 1953)

A Scandal in Paris (Sirk, 1946) - 7/10
Grass (Hong, 2018) - 8/10
*My Night at Maud’s (Rohmer, 1969) - 10/10
*Martha (Fassbinder, 1974) - 9/10
*La Collectionneuse (Rohmer, 1967) - 7/10
*Shanghai Express (Sternberg, 1932) - 10/10
On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (Hong, 2002) - 8/10
*Dishonored (Sternberg, 1931) - 10/10
Yourself and Yours (Hong, 2016) - 8/10
The Tarnished Angels (Sirk, 1957) - 8/10
Sword of Trust (Shelton, 2019) - 3/10
Charley Varrick (Siegel, 1973) - 8/10
*Black Girl (Sembène, 1966) - 9/10
*I Am Curious (Yellow) (Sjöman, 1967) - 8/10
*Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974) - 10/10
*Claire’s Knee (Rohmer, 1970) - 8/10
Moonrise (Borzage, 1948) - 10/10
*Je, tu, il, elle (Akerman, 1974) - 9/10
Chicken with Vinegar (Chabrol, 1985) - 6/10
Body Double (DePalma, 1984) - 7/10
Death by Hanging (Oshima, 1968) - 9/10
Casualties of War (DePalma, 1989) - 5/10
Minnie & Moskowitz (Cassavetes, 1971) - 7/10
Gone Baby Gone (Affleck, 2007) - 8/10
Inspector Lavardin (Chabrol, 1986) - 6/10
Reflections in a Golden Eye (Huston, 1967) - 6/10
*Alphaville (Godard, 1965) - 10/10
Tommaso (Ferrara, 2019) - 9/10
Riot in Cell Block 11 (Siegel, 1954) - 9/10
*The Devil, Probably (Bresson, 1977) - 10/10
À Nos Amours (Pialat, 1983) - 8/10
*Love in the Afternoon (Rohmer, 1972) - 7/10
Pasolini (Ferrara, 2014) - 8/10

*Dreamchild (1985, Millar) 6/10
The Homecoming (1973, Hall) 8/10
Strike (1925, Eisenstein) 10/10
*The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972, Bunuel) 9/10
Hallelujah (1929, K. Vidor) 8/10
A Chump at Oxford (1940, Goulding) 7/10
The Killing Floor (1984, Duke)
The Wedding Night (1935, K. Vidor) 6/10
Original Cast Album: Company (1970, Pennebaker) 8/10
*Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963, Drew) 9/10

The Killing Floor 7/10

Polanski made a brutish, fine Macbeth too:

https://letterboxd.com/fernandofcroce/film/macbeth-1971/

Roadblock (Harold Daniels, 1951)
Memory: The Origins of Alien (Alexandre O. Philippe, 2019)
The Last Of Sheila (Herbert Ross, 1973)
I Aim At The Stars (J. Lee Thompson, 1960)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot, 2019)
The Vast Of Night (Andrew Patterson, 2019)
Trouble In Mind (Alan Rudolph, 1985)
Cleopatra Wong (Bobby A. Suarez, 1978)
H. (Rania Attieh, Daniel Garcia, 2014)
7 uomini d'oro (Marco Vicario, 1965)
Korla (John Turner, 2015)

I probably would have liked Trouble In Mind had I seen it new and not 35 years later but I suspect I was wanting it to be a different movie. The two fan documentaries are fannish, but the Korla Pandit doc has a lot of terrific footage I'd never seen before. Roadblock is a gritty RKO noir that stuck in my head far longer than the rest - recommended!

Saw Trouble In Mind during lockdown, having missed a Rudolph-hosted screening at the museum that plays Divine’s house the week before. It’s not good per se, and moderately boring, but would still play better in an audience who had no particular expectations. It was fun matching the locations to IRL and seeing the changes, for sure. (The cafe that most characters converge around is now a marijuana shop.)

Sitting at the drive-in rn, waiting for sunset, to see my first projected movie in months.

thats awesome

Fabulous Baker Boys, Trouble In Mind, and McQ would make for a ridiculously great old Old Seattle triple team

May/June

Vivarium (2019) 7/10
Get On Up (2014) 7/10
*King of New York (1990) 8/10
*Scum (1979) 8/10
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) 7/10
*Animal Farm (1954) 8/10
England is Mine (2017) 4/10
Ronin (1998) 7/10
Fedora (1978) 7/10
*Wayne's World (1992) 7/10
Last Night (1998) 8/10
Sully (2016) 5/10
*Supersonic (2016) 8/10
The Sacrifice (1986) 5/10
*Logan (2017) 7/10
Wax, or The Discovery of Television Among The Bees (1991) 7/10
The Mule (2018) 6/10
Every Day is Like Sunday (2016) 6/10
The Trap: What Happened to our Dream of Freedom (2007) 8/10
The Century of The Self (2002) 9/10
Woman at War (2018) 8/10

Fabulous Baker Boys, Trouble In Mind, and McQ would make for a ridiculously great old Old Seattle triple team

Fabulous Baker Boys is nearly all LA playing Seattle. Sub in Scorchy (1976 all-location flick that appears to have been written as a blaxploitation, then cast with a white lady), or Harry In Your Pocket (1973 pickpocket flick starring James Coburn, the only film directed by Mission Impossible creator Bruce Geller) for higher dosages.

Daughters of the Dust (1991, dir. Julie Dash)

this is very good. have you all seen it? the setting is 1902, a Gullah family living on the Sea Islands off the coast of GA/SC, making a move to the mainland

That film is great! Apparently she is doing a biopic on Angela Davis

Mention of “fan documentaries” above... this is a weird thing now, these kickstarted 9 hour dvd extras masquerading as actual films. Lots of them on shudder.

Anyway I just watched the first ep of a very stupid and exploitative shudder doc on “cursed films”. It’s very insubstantial and you could just spend 2 minutes reading a wiki subsection, the talking heads they get (a film critic, a podcaster, a couple of professional sceptics) are all actual idiots with zero insight. Nobody bothers to mention that Julian Beck had already been diagnosed with cancer when he was cast so his death was hardly surprising, or consider whether the child actor nearly being choked by a malfunctioning effect might be more indicative of a lax attitude to worker protection in a production by a filmmaker who would produce a film the very next year in which two children died. The only thing that made it worthwhile viewing was a 5-minute interview with the director of poltergeist 3, who seems genuinely haunted by the experience. Also right at the end the effects supervisor from the first film shuts down the whole myth so definitively that you’re like: well, yeah, so wtf have we been doing for the last half hour?

Also I have to say the behind the scenes footage of p3 where it’s clear heather o’rourke is very unwell was hard to watch

need to rewatch Daughters of the Dust W/ subtitles on

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Haynes 1988)
Spiritual Kung Fu (Lo Wei, 1978)
$ (Brooks, 1975)
The Hatbox (short - Mottola, 1985)
Vera Drake (Leigh, 2004)
Street of Crocodiles (short - Quay Bros., 1986)
The Wayward Cloud (Tsai, 2005)
Symphony in Black and Blue (short - Scotto, 1932)
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (short - Scorsese, 1963)
Michigan Avenue (short - Gordon, Benning, 1973)
I-94 (short - Gordon, Benning, 1974)
The Big Shave (short - Scorsese, 1967)
Cab Calloway's Hi-de-Ho (short - Waller, 1934)
Katzelmacher (Fassbinder, 1969) (best episode of "Friends" ever)
Down There (Akerman, 2006)
Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (short - Quay Bros., 1987)
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Petri, 1970)
Coup de grace (Schlondorff, 1976)
In Absentia (short - Quay Bros., 2000)
The Phantom Museum (short - Quay Bros., 2003)
Golden Eighties (Akerman, 1986)
Italianamerican (Scorsese, 1974)
In a Year of 13 Moons (Fassbinder, 1978)
Toni (Renoir, 1935)
Original Cast Album: "Company" (Pennebaker, 1970)

Katzelmacher (Fassbinder, 1969) (best episode of "Friends" ever)

lmao

South (1999; Chantal Akerman's look at the James Byrd murder in TX) 4/5
* Melvin and Howard (1980) 4/5
Bless Their Little Hearts (1983) 3/5
Event Horizon (1997) 2.5/5
Candyman (1992) 3.5/5
Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) 3.5/5
You Don't Nomi (2019) 3/5
Married to the Mob (1988) 3.5/5

Harry In Your Pocket (1973 pickpocket flick starring James Coburn, the only film directed by Mission Impossible creator Bruce Geller) for higher dosages.

Terrific movie and ashamed I forgot it (stand corrected of FBB)

The depression/insomnia/existential dread has finally receded enough for me to start watching movies again, so in the last three days it's been:

Crimewave (the forgotten/discarded Coens/Raimi joint; shrill and dumb and way more fun than its reputation suggests) 3/5
Antiviral (Cronenberg fils' debut picture which has been sitting on my shelf in shrinkwrap for like 6 years; see above re: depression- was surprised by how much I loved this) 4/5
Seventh Curse (want to see a martial arts movie where Chow Yun-Fat does nothing but smoke a pipe and shoot a demon in the face with a rocket launcher? you should, it rules) 3.5/5

Just saw an excellent documentary called "An Uncomfortable Truth." The backstory is that my wife grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and one of her favorite teachers, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, was a famous civil rights activist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Trumpauer_Mulholland). My wife sort of knew that, but she was probably too young at the time to appreciate it. Anyway, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland has two sons, Loki and Geronimo (how cool is that?), that my wife knew, and Loki specifically has gone on to make a couple of great documentaries, the first about his mom and the second, this one, which is simultaneously about the racist foundations of America but also about how he and his mom, this famous civil rights activist, have personally benefitted from that same racist foundation, stretching all the way back to his slave owning family at Jonestown. Anyway, it's really a beautiful story, told simply and powerfully, that gets to the heart of a lot of truths about this country that people don't talk much about or, maybe more accurately, are starting to talk about more right now.

Anyway, it can be streamed lots of places.

Toni (Renoir, 1935)
Whirlpool (Neill, 1934)
Panique (Duvivier, 1946)
Foolish Wives (von Stroheim, 1922)
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (Juran & Harryhausen, 1958)
*It's a Gift (Fay, 1923)
*Won in a Closet (Normand, 1914)
A Waggin' Tale (de Haven, 1923)

June:

Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren & Hammid, 1943) 9/10
The Cat and the Canary (Nugent, 1939) 8/10
GU04 (Strickland, 2019) 6/10
Die, Monster, Die (Haller, 1965) 5/10
A Study in Terror (Hill, 1965) 7/10
The Case of the Scorpion's Tale (Martino, 1971) 7/10
Exorcist II: The Heretic (Boorman, 1977) 4/10
Moon Zero Two (Baker, 1969) 7/10
Night of the Eagle (Hayers, 1962) 7/10
Vera Cruz (Aldrich, 1954) 7/10
Pieces (Simón, 1982) 7/10
Sudden Fear (Miller, 1952) 8/10
The Full Treatment (Guest, 1960) 4/10
Swamp (Holt & Smithson, 1969) 9/10
The Damned (Losey, 1963) 7/10
You Only Live Once (Lang, 1937) 8/10
Ten Seconds to Hell (Aldrich, 1959) 4/10
Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji (Uchida, 1955) 8/10
Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Martino, 1972) 7/10
Calling All Police Cars (Caiano, 1975) 7/10

two weeks, pretty light:

Great:
Be Water (2020, Nguyen)
The Jerk (1974, Reiner)

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
Where’s My Roy Cohn? (2019, Tyrnauer)
El Campeón de Mundo (2020, Madiero and Borgia)
Who You Think I Am (2020, Sebbou)

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
Sometimes Always Never (2020, Hunter)
Ringside (2020, Hörmann)
Eating up Easter (2020, Mata’u Rapu)
Booksellers (2020, Young)

For "Who You Think I Am" I spent a week collaborating with a french speaker to write English fansubs, first time I ever tried that. Watched the movie probably nine times. Happy to share if anyone's interested!

I'm also taking on a project of watching all the historical Looney Tunes shorts. The Bosko ones are repetitive, formulaic and racist but there are some truly hallucinogenic ideas and designs.

Getting back up to speed.

13 Ghosts (Castle, 1960)- 2.5/5 'salright
*Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)- 4.5/5 damn near perfect film, not a fan of Burwell's score but that's just nitpicking
The Swimmer (Perry, 1968)- 3/5 unsure about the expansion from Cheever's story (haven't read it in ages but I feel like there was a more, for lack of a better term, magical realist dimension than "oh this dude crazy" as in the film) but the casting and seedy suburban-ness (that gross pool party with the big plastic dome!), and Marvin Hamlisch's overripe romantic-to-the-point-of-gothic score, are excellent
Succubus/Necronomicon (Franco, 1968)- 3/5 the first Franco film I've really vibed with; I'm not denying Franco's artistry but it's easier to come to grips with Succubus' art film pretensions than the usual Franco feel of "check out my partner's bush, it is fuckin righteous"

*Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959) 10/10
If You Could Only Cook (Seiter, 1935) 6/10
The Fountainhead (K. Vidor, 1949) 4/10
*Bunny Lake Is Missing (Preminger, 1965) 7/10
The Westerner (Wyler, 1940) 8/10
Drive a Crooked Road (Quine, 1954) 6/10
Phase IV (Bass, 1974) 8/10
*Bonjour Tristesse (Preminger, 1958) 10/10
That Certain Summer (Johnson, TV, 1972) 5/10
*The Lineup (Siegel, 1958) 9/10
*Big Night (Tucci, Scott, 1996) 8/10
Captains Courageous (Fleming, 1937) 7/10
*Death Race 2000 (Bartel, 1975) 6/10

That Certain Summer (Johnson, TV, 1972) 5/10

Got a significant segment in the new AppleTV+ five-part series on the history of LGBTQ representation on American TV. Hard to tell if it was good but I'll certainly shop Hal Holbrook and young Martin Sheen.

It's to 1972 what Philadelphia was to 1993; a timid foot in the door, a plea for tolerance. Holbrook gives a solid performance despite the limitations. There are some very enlightening video interviews online with Holbrook, William Link (one of the two Columbo/Mannix guys who wrote it), and the director Lamont Johnson, who says Martin Sheen approached him one day hoping to work a cure for homosexuality into the plot...

what do you think of Daisy Kenyon? I don't think I've seen that much Preminger

Dance, Girl, Dance (Arzner, 1940) - 8/10
*Belle de Jour (Buñuel, 1967) - 9/10
*Get Him to the Greek (Stoller, 2010) - 8/10
L’enfance Nue (Pialat, 1968) - 9/10
Summer Hours (Assayas, 2008) - 7/10
*Vivre sa Vie (Godard, 1962) - 10/10
The Town (Affleck, 2010) - 4/10
*Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (Fassbinder, 1975) - 10/10
Strait-Jacket (Castle, 1964) - 9/10
White Heat (Walsh, 1949) - 9/10
The Most Dangerous Game (Schoedsack, Pichel; 1932) - 8/10
Secret Ceremony (Losey, 1968) - 6/10
*The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959) - 8/10
Da 5 Bloods (Lee, 2020) - 8/10
*Satan’s Brew (Fassbinder, 1976) - 9/10
Postcards from the Edge (Nichols, 1990) - 7/10
*A Married Woman (Godard, 1965) - 8/10
Wasp Network (Assayas, 2020) - 7/10
That’s My Boy (Anders, 2012) - 6/10
Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955) - 9/10
Accident (Losey, 1967) - 6/10
The Sleeping Beauty (Breillat, 2010) - 7/10
Irresistible (Stewart, 2020) - 0/10
Irma Vep (Assayas, 1996) - 8/10
*Despair (Fassbinder, 1978) - 5/10
Dark Victory (Goulding, 1939) - 7/10
Police (Pialat, 1985) - 7/10
Supernatural (Halperin, 1933) - 7/10
*Les Biches (Chabrol, 1968) - 9/10
Riff-Raff (Loach, 1991) - 8/10
I Am Curious (Blue) (Sjöman, 1968) - 8/10

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (Taurog, 1934)
It’s the Old Army Game (Sutherland, 1926)
America (Griffith, 1924)
Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (Beaudine, 1966)
Shine Em Up (Davis, 1922)
A Thrilling Romance (Robbins, 1926)
*The Scarecrow (Keaton & Cline, 1920)

Busy week and a half.

Great:
Jasper Mall (Thomason and Whitcomb, 2020)
The Personal History of David Copperfield (Iannucci, 2020)

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
Red Dog (Pinkston and Dick, 2020)
Miss Juneteenth (Peoples, 2020)
Pahokie (Lucas and Bresnan, 2020)
Pipe Dreams (Tenenbaum, 2020)
Aya of Yop City (Abouet and Oubrerie, 2013)
Jump Shot (Hamiton, 2019)

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
Inmate 1: The Rise of Danny Trejo (Harvey, 2020)

On-Deck:
First Cow, Lynn and Lucy, Radioactive, Ghost of Peter Sellers, Fanny Lye Deliver'd, John Lewis: Good Trouble, Radioactive, Relic, Scheme Birds

I thought "Palm Springs" was better than I expected it to be, if not really as good as it could have been, but it was still enjoyable. Great soundtrack.

Watched "The Seventh Seal," "Spirit of the Beehive" and "Some Like it Hot" with my daughter this week. Appreciated but I don't think liked the first, liked the second, but (of course) really enjoyed the third.

where is Palm Springs? Netflix?

Hulu

Booloo

ilplex too!

There should be a streaming service called Fomo.

I should say my *daughter* enjoyed those aforementioned movies to varying degrees (I'd already seen them of course). I'm always curious what a 2020 teen thinks of classic movies or "foreign" or art films. Will their iconic qualities transcend the language barrier, or the black and white, or the grainy image or the style of filmmaking? Or, as is frequently the case with her and classic American movies, the everyone-is-whiteness, or everyone-is-maleness. It's always satisfying to watch decades old classics still able do the thing they're classic for, but it's also interesting to rewatch classics that for whatever reason don't hold up or hold her attention. Everyone is different, but it's something we (or at least) generally can't recall, the moment when our brains shift when we're young from more or less mindless mainstream consumers to more discerning cineastes. Doesn't happen to everyone, obviously, and doesn't need to. There are plenty of movies to go around. Still, it's wonderful when you realize there's a whole section - or several floors - of the library you've never learned about before.

Encouraging and also makes sense that His Girl Friday was a hit, I think

Raining Stones (Loach, 1993) - 7/10
—The Curve (Shaki, 1999) - 10/10 <------ INCREDIBLE short by Edwige Shaki
*The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1979) - 9/10
*Bad Timing (Roeg, 1980) - 10/10
Hardcore (Schrader, 1979) - 9/10
Drums Along the Mohawk (Ford, 1939) - 8/10
*Metropolitan (Stillman, 1990) - 8/10
The Cinema and Its Double (Fischer, 2011) - 8/10
*In a Year with 13 Moons (Fassbinder, 1978) - 10/10
Blue Collar (Schrader, 1978) - 9/10
Berserk! (O'Connolly, 1967) - 7/10
Fixed Bayonets! (Fuller, 1951) - 7/10
We Won’t Grow Old Together (Pialat, 1972) - 10/10
Joe (Avildsen, 1970) - 7/10
Sing a Song of Sex (Oshima, 1967) - 7/10
Sleep, My Love (Sirk, 1948) - 6/10
Loulou (Pialat, 1980) - 9/10
Beggars of Life (Wellman, 1928) - 9/10
*Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi, 1954) - 9/10
Ruthless People (Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker; 1986) - 5/10
The Steel Helmet (Fuller, 1951) - 8/10
Billy Liar (Schlesinger, 1963) - 6/10
Three Resurrected Drunkards (Oshima, 1968) - 8/10

Afraid to Talk (Cahn, 1932)
My Best Girl (Taylor, 1927)
Open All Night (Pearson, 1934)
Oranges and Lemons (Jeske, 1923)
A Bathtub Bandit (Santell, 1917)
*The Rink (Chaplin,, 1916)

xpost She loved His Girl Friday.

A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger, 1946)
The Blues Brothers (Landis, 1980)
Hana-Bi (Kitano, 1997)
Ad Astra (Gray, 2019)
*I Confess (Hitchcock, 1953)
Dolemite is My Name (Brewer, 2019)
It's Alive (Cohen, 1974)
Pain and Glory (Almodóvar, 2019)
*Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951)
Bodyguard (Fleischer, 1948)

The bad thing about the Netflix-made comicbook action fantasy Old Guard is that it's not better: tonally all over the place, regularly show-stopping lines of tin-eared dialogue, astonishingly bad music queues, a few poorly/under-acted characters and jam-packed with clichés. Pontificating about making the world better while ruthlessly murdering balaclava-masked men by the dozens, check; midlevel miniboss dispatched with a pithy punchline, check; betrayals that you can smell coming a half hour away, check; one last job for shit that you're getting too old for, check; gratuitous sequel-set-up at the end, check.

BUT it's intelligently laid out, well directed, mostly engaging and Theron is a magnetic presence and an unbeatable special effect. If you're even thinking about watching it, it's likely worth about an hour and a half of your time and I'll bet you won't begrudge the extra half hour they jammed in there to juke the stats.

fights are well-done, the attempts to show various historical warzones across thousands of years by having close-up two-shots of Charlize's face wearing different stock "period" headdresses while talking to someone in smoky eye make-up are unintentionally v funny