Last (x) movies you saw (II)

The Scoundrel (Hecht & MacArthur, 1935)
Mystery Liner (Nigh, 1934)
A Modern Cinderella (Dawley, 1911)
Felix Gets the Can (Messmer, 1925)
Japanicky (Messmer, 1928)
Forty Winks (Messmer, 1930)
6 Hours to Live (Dieterle, 1932)
The Drums of Jeopardy (Seitz, 1931)
The Vanishing Legion (Beebe & Eason, 1931)
A Daughter of Destiny (Galeen, 1928)
Tarantula (Arnold, 1955)
Out Bound (Edwards, 1924)
*Now or Never (Roach & Newmeyer, 1921)
The Skeleton Dance (Disney, 1929)
The Fall of the House of Usher (Watson & Webber, 1928)

Started "Satantango" the other night. I enjoyed the first hour and will get around to the rest of it in chunks, but so far its epic runtime seems like it may be an unnecessary (or at least arbitrary) hurdle. Though I suppose equally effective in its imposing impact.

Watched the original "Suspiria" with my older daughter last night. She liked it! It's so goofy and garish. When it was over she turned to me and said "I liked that, but it didn't really make a lot of sense. Now I want to know what the witches were doing there, what was their plan, etc." But she's smart and mature enough to simultaneous recognize that none of that really matters. Also to find the exposition dump about witches in the middle of the movie hilarious.

Da 5 Bloods (Lee, 2020)
The Invisible Man (Whannell, 2020)
Old Acquaintance (Sherman, 1943)
They Won't Believe Me (Pichel, 1947)
Wasp Netwrok (Assayas, 2019)
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Kaufman, 2020)
Where the Sidewalk Ends (Preminger, 1950)
*Real Life (Brooks, 1979)
Häxan (Christensen, 1922)
The Racket (Cromwell, 1951)

Re-Animator (1985) 3/5
* Real Life (1979) 4.5/5
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) 4/5
The Witch Who Came From the Sea (1976) 2.5/5 Has a strong Manos: The Hands of Fate vibe.
Galaxy Quest (1999) 4/5
Blonde Crazy (1931) 3.5/5
Dick Johnson is Dead (2020) 2/5 I've liked the director's previous docs but I could not relate to what she was doing here.
Night of the Demon (1957) 3.5/5
Queen of Diamonds (1991) 3/5

Josh: keep plowing through Satantango and you'll be rewarded with a scene where a cat is abused for several minutes.

Real cat?

Yes.

Hmm. I guess that puts it in rare company. Well, I don't know how I feel about that. Just googling, Tarr does not sound terribly convincing in his defense(s) that the cat is real but the abuse is not:

ROSENBAUM: I know, but it’s still significant to me that many people who see Sátántangó get very upset about the cat, because they think this was really done to the cat. And it wasn’t. The point is that they are seduced into the narrative in a way that it feels very real.

TARR: But you know, this is my job. I just do that. 1 just wanted to make some tension. You know, the cat is still alive….

ROSENBAUM: And it’s your cat.

TARR: No, it’s not my cat. But I have a cat at home and I have two dogs, it is impossible for me to kill or destroy any animal.

ROSENBAUM: I thought you said it was one that actually you adopted after the film…

TARR: No, no. It was one cat of a friend of mine. She just slept a little. She just got an injection, and she slept. There was an animal doctor and it was very safe. When the girl is jumping with the cat, they also just played. And all of the sound that was used was artificial, it was from the sound archive.

So it's a real cat ... sedated and tormented, with sound effects? " She just slept a little. She just got an injection, and she slept" sounds like something Trump would tell his kid after he killed their cat.

Yeah, I've never believed Tarr on this (and Rosenbaum is content here to go along with it). The cat was obviously in distress as you watch the little girl wrestling it for a long time. If it came out of it ok I doubt it was because of any precautions they took.

Young Man with a Horn (Curtiz, 1950) - 8/10
*Fox and His Friends (Fassbinder, 1975) - 10/10
Bottle Rocket (Anderson, 1996) - 4/10
Bat Pussy (?, 197?) - 5/10
Robot Love Slaves (?, 1971) - 5/10
Claudine (Berry, 1974) - 8/10
The Whole Town’s Talking (Ford, 1935) - 7/10
Girl, Interrupted (Mangold, 1999) - 7/10
Bucking Broadway (Ford, 1917) - 9/10
Gold is Where You Find It (Curtiz, 1938) - 8/10
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966) - 9/10
Napoli Napoli Napoli (Ferrara, 2009) - 7/10
The Breaking Point (Curtiz, 1950) - 9/10
Man of the World (Wallace, Goodman; 1931) - 6/10
True Grit (Hathaway, 1969) - 6/10
Man’s Favorite Sport? (Hawks, 1964) - 7/10
Arabian Nights (Pasolini, 1974) - 8/10
Rio Lobo (Hawks, 1970) - 6/10
Red Line 7000 (Hawks, 1965) - 4/10
The Long Voyage Home (Ford, 1940) - 8/10
*Night Moves (Penn, 1975) - 7/10
Score (Metzger, 1974) - 7/10
There’s Always Tomorrow (Sirk, 1956) - 7/10
City Hall (Becker, 1996) - 5/10
The Canterbury Tales (Pasolini, 1972) - 9/10
Nancy Drew: Detective (Clemens, 1938) - 6/10
Ms. Purple (Chon, 2019) - 5/10
The Decameron (Pasolini, 1971) - 8/10

The Breaking Point (Curtiz, 1950) - 9/10

Isn't this one great? Better than the Bogie and Bacall version, I say, and one the most heartbreaking closing shots in any film.

Bingo all the way. Knocked me out

Long Gone Summer (6.5)
Jazz on a Summer’s Day (7.5)
Festival (1967) (8.0)
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (5.5)
Girlhood (7.0)
Hairspray (7.0)
Help! (6.5)
On the Rocks (6.0)
Meeting the Beatles in India (6.5)
The Nest (7.0)

Plus a few others since I posted in August--I stopped keeping a running list. Long Gone Summer (the McGwire/Sosa 30 for 30) isn't a film, but I couldn't remember anything else for an even 10. Hadn't seen Help! in ages. "Ticket to Ride," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," and "I Need You" are incredible; when music isn't playing, a lot of the rest das dreary as people have been telling me for years.

"is as dreary" (Das Dreary was a band).

+ White Riot (6.5)

Ad Astra - first movie in a while that has really bummed me out to have seen on a 40" TV instead of a big screen.

Koko-di Koko-da (Nyholm) 7
Sonatine (Kitano) 7
Little Joe (Hausner) 5
Female Human Animal (Appignanesi) 5
Death In The Garden (Bunuel) 7
*Audition (Miike) 7
Garnet's Gold (Perkins) 8
A Scene At The Sea (Kitano) 9
Saint Maud (Glass) 9

I thought "Save Yourselves!" was a blast, most fun I've had in weeks.

Day of the Dead
Event Horizon
apparently piracy is the only option to see Dawn of the Dead

House of Mystery (Nigh, 1934)
The Devil (Young, 1921)
Ten Minutes to Live (Micheaux, 1932)
The Headless Horseman (Venturini, 1922)
The Bat (West, 1926)
*The Devil-Doll (Browning, 1936)
*Fire Fighters (McGowan & McNamara, 1922)
Dogs of War! (McGowan, 1923)
Danse Macabre (Murphy, 1922)

My daughter really liked the original Halloween. Dawn of the Dead, other hand, it's been a struggle to get her to even start, and I doubt I can get her to finish it. I think her biggest complaint is too '70s? She also thinks zombies are boring.

She might like the faster remake? Despite being a Zack Snyder joint it's actually pretty good.

I'm sure she would like the remake, but the traditionalist/snob in me couldn't let her watch it until she saw the original.

Remake is dope. Totally different movies. I saw the first one shortly after the remake, probably the only way to be able to appreciate the remake

The orig has my favorite lol70s line though: "What the hell is that?" "It looks like... one of those big indoor shopping malls!"

newly relevant for millenials

lol that's the only reason my kids wants to see more, just to get to the old fashioned mall.

i likely recommended it upthread but she should try Jasper Mall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7ytbs3y5U

We watched "Night of the Hunter" tonight. I hadn't seen it in ages, but I was happy to see that my daughter appreciated it for being such a special movie. Definitely made up for her dismissing "Dawn of the Dead."

it's the best

i have an mp3 of this song that i break out every once in a while
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMF0Wc_hm4A

Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Shimizu, 1933) - 8/10
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra, 1936) - 9/10
King Creole (Curtiz, 1958) - 6/10
*Don’t Look Now (Roeg, 1973) - 9/10
*Three Colors: White (Kieślowski, 1994) - 10/10
*Three Colors: Red (Kieślowski, 1994) - 9/10
*Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958) - 8/10
*Blow Out (De Palma, 1981) - 10/10
Clueless (Heckerling, 1995) - 10/10
Kajillionaire (July, 2020) - 9/10
*I Married a Witch (Clair, 1942) - 9/10
All I Desire (Sirk, 1953) - 8/10
*The Lady from Shanghai (Welles, 1948) - 8/10
*They All Laughed (Bogdanovich, 1981) - 10/10

I made plans to watch They All Laughed tonight with a friend (simultaneously, on an opposite coast). I got the news about Morbs from Ray when I was on the phone with her. Before I hung up I told her what Morbs said about They All Laughed: "Watched the first 20 minutes of They All Laughed last night. I didn't."

I was planning on making this post to get him to harangue me for ranking Touch of Evil and Lady from Shanghai higher than They All Laughed, or giving Blow Out a 10. I miss him. I want to talk about Ford and Fassbinder again. I want to be harangued. I wanted to learn more from him.

i just discovered Yuri Ancarani and whoa. Here's a cam copy of his outrageous Da Vinci; seeing it on the big screen would be next level but the first five minutes of this even in diminished format had me screaming at my television.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cBoqgJfyXw

last few:
shock corridor - fuller 196? aggressively crass, not as brilliantly deranged as the naked kiss but amazing how relentlessly offensive it was

beyond the secret door (?) - lang 1948 - daft psychoanalysis plot that gets more and more ludicrous. Joan bennett is hilarious in this and I bet it was pretty fabulous to hang out on the set of this. I kept thinking 'what on earth is happening' but it all made its own sense

knives out - someone 2019 - toni colette is very funny and i barely recognised anyone else but sensed you were meant to enjoy them all mugging out of character. i was hungover and my bf suggested we watch something as dumb as like pitch perfect 2 or something and this fitted the bill

platform - jia zhangke 2000 - this was so deeply moving to me. weirdly reminded me of being a teenager more than almost any other film i know. The scene where he suddenly starts singing the rock song and then they run to watch the train. was worried about watching after seeing ash is purest which, in case it was a letdown but I loved this even more. keep thinking about it and its weeks now since i watched it. the last few scenes. my god.

bright eyes - stuart marshall 1984 - this was so boring. historical interest only

unknown pleasures - jia zhangke - this was harsher than the others i've seen by him, but had the best zhao tao performance.

ace in the hole - wilder - ???? - this film was not nearly as clever as it thought it was. was pretty bored by the end. the moralism the predicability. i read the wikipedia article about roy cohn on my phone during it

love is colder than death - fassbinder - was actually surprised at how this was literally him 'doing' breathless. hannah schuygulla was hot in it tho

weekend - godard - 196? my bf was very 'what was that?' and i think i said something about cinema destroying itself lol so i think it was pretty stupid.

Murder on the Campus (Thorpe, 1933)
Lost In Limehouse (Brower, 1933)
High Treason (silent version, Elvey, 1929)
The Return of Chandu (Taylor, 1934)
Satanic Rhapsody (Oxilia, 1917)
Riley the Cop (Ford, 1928)
Halloween (Huemer & Marcus, 1931)
The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge (Clair, 1925)
Now We're in the Air (surviving fragments, Strayer, 1927)
Mighty Joe Young (Schoedsack, 1949)
Circus Clowns (Hibbard, 1922?)
The Kid Reporter (Goulding, 1923)
Deviled Crabs (Burns & Stull, 1917)
Local Showers (Myll, 1916)
*The Haunted House (Keaton & Cline, 1921)

*Lost in America (Brooks, 1985)
The Deep (Yates, 1977)
*Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968)
Destination Murder (Cahn, 1950)
David Byrne's American Utopia (Lee, 2020)
The Killers (Siegel, 1964)
*Suspiria (Argento, 1977)
Macao (von Sternberg, 1952)
*Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922)
Shivers (Cronenberg, 1975)

My daughter actually requested we finish the OG "Dawn of the Dead," which I chalk up to the likable characters. Last night we watched "Diabolique," which she loved. As she said, she guessed the twist, but only after the movie had moved so close to the end where it was even possible to do so.

October:

The Blue Gardenia (Lang, 1953) 7/10
The Grapes of Death (Rollin, 1978) 8/10
All the Colours of the Dark (Martino, 1972) 8/10
The Haunted Palace (Corman, 1963) 7/10
Cisco Pike (Norton, 1972) 9/10 - beautiful new blu-ray of this from Indictaor
The Man With the Golden Gun (Hamilton, 1974) 5/10
The Honeymoon Killers (Kastle, 1970) 9/10
The Flesh and Blood Show (Walker, 1972) 5/10
Satan's Slave (Warren, 1976) 6/10
The Void (Gillespie, Kostanski 2016) 6/10
The Hands of Orlac (Greville, 1960) 5/10 - 'continental' version, including Christopher Lee commandingly delivering all his dialogue in French
The Tall Men (Walsh, 1955) 7/10
The Paleface (McLeod, 1948) 7/10
Underworld U.S.A. (Fuller, 1961) 8/10
Stage Fright: Aquarius (Soavi, 1987) 7/10
The Infernal Cakewalk (Melies, 1903)
Creature from the Black Lagoon (Arnold, 1954) 7/10
Steamboat Bill, Jr (Keaton, Reisner 1928) 9/10 - Morbs Memorial Viewing
Lemon (Frampton, 1969) 8/10
Pursued (Walsh, 1947) 7/10 - stunning James Wong Home cinematography - I don't think of Walsh primarily as a visual stylist, but both this and The Tall Men are very beautiful films
Mark of the Devil (Armstrong, 1970) 7/10
Run ('Luther Price', 1994) 8/10
The Premonition (Schnitzer, 1976) 6/10
Shock Waves (Wiederhorn, 1977) 5/10

Summer of ’85 (Ozon, 2020) 7/10
Days (Tsai, 2020) 8/10
The Trial of the Chicago 7(Sorkin, 2020) 4/10
Martin Eden (Marcello, 2020) 6/10
Homicide (Mamet, 1990) 6/10
Matewan (Sayles, 1987) 6/10
Christ stopped at Eboli (Rosi, 1979) 7/10

It's been a lot of television this month as my attention span has been lessened by, oh, everything.

Great (non-2020):
* Il Capo (Ancarani, 2010)
What a revelation! I'll need to watch all of this guy's work now

* Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever (1983)
The first televised moonwalk, amazing Diana Ross pettiness, Richard Pryor winging it, The Temptations and the Four Tops battling, Marvin Gaye at the end... there's basically no end to the amazingness on this two hour special and you should watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPsfsyi1bvs

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
*Shithouse (2020, Raiff)
This was fine; maybe a bit more at the center than the description suggests. The writer/director/lead is clearly a talented kid and I'm curious to see where he goes from here.

*Mandibles (2020, Dupeiux)
Dupieux's dark sense of humor feels best tempered to me when he's not taking himself too seriously or asking the audience to pretend that anything we're watching requests our empathy. His zanies here bring into play some of the pure dumbness of the Coen brothers best anti-heroes and (maybe moreso than some of his other mcguffins) the winged prize at its center maintains a delectable air of pure dada without putting a strain on the antics. Maybe my fave of his work that I've seen thus far.

*Love and Monsters (2020, Matthews)
A semi-throwback post-apocalypse lone hero movie with predictable and reasonably enjoyable beats throughout. Good monster design, mostly unembarrassing dialogue and lots of time to check your phone or get popcorn without feeling like the film was unnecessarily padded gave this some necessary goodwill. I was less enthusiastic about the projection-ready grandiose mythical beta neet who just needs to be tested to rise to his full superheroic potential and show everyone the way out of bondage. "Get out and impose your white boy will on the world regardless of how dangerous or useful your influence might be" is a tiresome drum to beat under the best of times; in the COVID-era it feels outrageously tin-eared, if not foolhardy and dangerous.

*Long Gone Summer (2020)
The last time baseball was kinda interesting imo.

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
*The Donut King (2020, Gu)
Suffers from being overlong and from empathizing too much with its lead, but it's a hell of a story about immigrants in America and how capitalism in the 80's could still be overthrown by grass roots determination.

*First Cow (2020, Reichardt)
I think it's my own fault for not liking this more: I stupidly chopped up the viewing into two pieces and mucked up Reichardt's glacial but always intentional flow. Besides that the inevitable slide into violence combined with the dreamlike pace was just too nerve-wracking for my COVID-damaged psyche. Watching this on a television within range of a pause button was a bit of a fool's errand. I'll come back to this and try again in a few years, god-willing when her next film comes out and when I get to see this in theaters.

*Save Yourselves (2020, Wilson and Fischer)
Well observed but ultimately as fluffy and unrevealing as the puffs themselves. Slacker metaphor becomes slacker sci-fi philosophy.

No:
*12 Hour Shift (2020, Grant)
Waaaaay too dumb to even begin to take seriously and, sadly, neither accomplished or gonzo enough to provide worthwhile cheap thrills. Runs out of steam almost entirely in the third reel, leading to a number of particularly poorly filmed sequences and absurdly enacted plot points. Notable almost solely for Bettis, who is doing her best to carry the whole thing on her back. She doesn't succeed, but it's not for lack of trying.

*What the Constitution Means to Me (2020, Heller)
Disappointing editing/direction here; lots of cut-aways to audience shots to inform the viewer how they're meant to react to each line. Stops the viewer from engaging in the actual theater going on and continually reminds me of the disconnect. Makes me wish I could've seen this pre-COVID live; the monologue itself is pretty strong and well delivered.

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde (Rock & Pembroke, 1925)
Fascination (Mander, 1931)
The Telltale Heart (Shamroy & Klein, 1928)
Mabel's Strange Predicament (Normand, 1914)
The Flame Song (Henabery, 1934)
*The Infernal Cauldron (Melies, 1903)
The Infernal Cakewalk (Melies, 1903)
*Frankenstein (Dawley, 1910)
Satan in Prison (Melies, 1907)
The Moonstone (Barker, 1934)
Burn ’Em Up Barnes (Schaefer, 1934)
*Menu (Grinde, 1933)
Les Patineurs (Melies, 1908)
The Sorrows of Satan (Griffith, 1926)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Neill, 1943)
Dos Monjes (Bustillo Oro, 1934)

Home (Meier, 2008)
Amateur (Hartley, 1994)
Salon Kitty (Brass, 1976)
Cure (Kurosawa, 1997)
Le Navine Night (Duras, 1979)
Still the Water (Kawase, 2014)

An Unmarried Woman (Mazursky, 1978) - 5/10
Mister Roberts (Ford, LeRoy; 1955) - 6/10
Missing (Gavras, 1982) - 8/10
*The Searchers (Ford, 1956) - 10/10
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Waititi, 2016) - 3/10
The French Connection (Friedkin, 1971) - 7/10
*Just Before Nightfall (Chabrol, 1971) - 9/10
*She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Ford, 1949) - 9/10
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Woliner, 2020) - 7/10
House of Bamboo (Fuller, 1955) - 8/10
The Gambler (Reisz, 1974) - 8/10
Hi, Mom! (De Palma, 1970) - 6/10
*Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965) - 10/10
The Big Heat (Lang, 1953) - 8/10
Out of the Blue (Hopper, 1980) - 8/10
The Fury (De Palma, 1978) - 7/10
The Eroticist (Fulci, 1972) - 8/10
Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968) - 10/10
The Contender (Lurie, 2000) - 2/10
Phenomena (Argento, 1985) - 9/10
Malibu High (Berwick, 1979) - 6/10
Appassionata (Calderone, 1974) - 9/10
*Brewster McCloud (Altman, 1970) - 6/10
*Nashville (Altman, 1975) - 10/10
*Les Bonnes Femmes (Chabrol, 1960) - 9/10
*Fear of Fear (Fassbinder, 1975) - 9/10
*Night and Fog (Resnais, 1956) - 10/10
The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940) - 10/10
Girlfriends (Weill, 1978) - 10/10 <--------------------------Extraordinary film
*Chinese Roulette (Fassbinder, 1976) - 9/10
Murder by Contract (Lerner, 1958) - 8/10
*It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934) - 10/10
The Kennel Murder Case (Curtiz, 1933) - 7/10
The Immortal Story (Welles, 1968) - 8/10
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (Curtiz, 1939) - 8/10
On the Rocks (Coppola, 2020) - 9/10

(Waititi, 2016) - 3/10

have you seen / liked Boy or What We Do In The Shadows?

No, just Hunt & Jojo. Probably my least favorite active filmmaker

That’s too mild—I think he’s atrocious

Fwiw he did the only Marvel movie I didn’t outright loathe.

I'm honestly fine with anyone giving Hunt and Jojo 3/10, but Thor and Shadows are great fun.

idk if you'd like either of Boy or Shadows, especially if you'd bring a distaste for the whimsy elements of his work along, but they're far better than Hunt and Jojo.

there may come a time... Strong dislike always demands reevaluation