Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Copshop: a police station siege movie directed by Joe Carnahan, starring Frank Grillo and Gerard Butler, but the real star is Valerie Young, who should become a major star based on this. It's dumb, but smarter and funnier than it needed to be. Between this and Boss Level, Carnahan's on a streak.

Apocalypse Now: I love this movie so much. (Only the theatrical cut; every re-edit has been terrible.) If this was the only movie Coppola ever made — shit, if this was the only movie America ever produced — that would be fine with me. It's like Miles Davis's On the Corner; I notice something new every time.

April Fool (Ross, 1926)
*Hogfather (Jean, 20006)
Honey (Ruggles, 1930)
*The Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1934)
The Insects' Chriatmas (Starewicz, 1913)
Don't Look Up (McKay, 2021)
Whoopee! (Freeland, 19300

I really wanted to like Judas and the Black Messiah, and Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield were both great. But the movie just didn't fully come together for me.

Thelma (2017) 7/10
Censor (2021) 7/10
The Power of the Dog (2021) 8/10
The Headless Woman (2008) 8/10
Se7en (1995) 6/10

(The latter two a coincidence of timing, we weren't doing a headless woman marathon or anything.)

John Wick 3 cos it's great Xmas Day viewing
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as I ate dinner. & can get the book it's based on alter thsi week
Carousel
South Pacific cos I somehow haven't seen the original or at least not since childhood or early teens. Last time i saw it was on tv it turned out to be the remake

this year's christmas crop/crap

Mixed Nuts (Ephron, 1994) 3/10
Four Christmases (2008) abandoned
*Home Alone (Columbus, 1990) 5/10
A Christmas Tale (very french guy, 2008) 6/10

also
The Great Muppet Caper, which doesn't have anything to do with Christmas but feels like Christmas to me, (Henson, 1981) 8/10

Last Christmas (very literal...)
Bloody Spear At Mount Fuji
Gunda: Mother, Pig
Love, Actually
Grapes Of Wrath
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On

I watched the first Hanzo the Razor movie last night without knowing anything about it and expecting something like Zatoichi or Lone Wolf...wtaffff o_O

Criterion's entirely anodyne one-sentence description borders on malfeasance

Licorice Pizza: Maybe PTA's worst film? It had moments but it really didn't add up to much for me. My fellow audience gasped in dismay at the John Michael Higgins scenes.

Mortal Engines Peter Jackson 2018
Interesting premise in a post apocalyptic world cities are now mobile fighting vehicles that eat up smaller cities to keep them going.
Result is semi enjoyable, helped pass the time. & I had wanted to go and see it when it was out. Not caught it until now when it was on Film4 last night.
Could be better but so could a lot of things.
I hadn't taken in that it was a Peter jackson film I don't think . It has some of his tropes i guess.
So shoot em up steam punk adventure with a hidden evil and some lower status individuals showing they're as good as some aristos and things. But still viewing true aristos to be decent upstanding people.
& the system to be something that can be corrupted but should be maintained for teh common good or something.
I dunno, would it be better with a more leftists slant?

Saw and mostly enjoyed "Red Rocket," which definitely fits the/an ongoing trend of sweaty, sleazy and desperate indies a la this year's "Zola," "Uncut Gems," etc. indirectly addressing class, capitalism, ethics and politics in America.

(Curious about other takes, I thought this Indiewire review nailed it: https://www.indiewire.com/2021/07/red-rocket-review-sean-baker-simon-rex-1234651067/)

Peter Jackson did not direct Mortal Engines, but he and his writing partners adapted the screenplay

This is probably a genre by now, with a Florida version (this, Spring Breakers, Bully) and a California version (Palo Alto, The Bling Ring). I wouldn't know what to call it: something shorter and pithier than Loathsome People (Not Everyone) Photographed Dreamily. American Honey, for me, is the pinnacle, but I usually come away with something. I'd include the Clickettes here, a girl group I don't think I'd ever heard before.

― clemenza, Sunday, 19 December 2021 23:04 (one week ago) link

I saw someone on Letterboxd refer to it as "the dirtbag picaresque"

December so far:

A Bigger Splash (Hazan, 1973)
The Sixth Sense(Shymalan, 1999)
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (Mekas, 2000)
Shirley (Decker, 2020)
Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground (Smith, 2018)
*The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940)
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Hittman, 2020)
Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018)
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999)
Intermission (Crowley, 2003)
The Rules of Attraction (Avary, 2002)
Hour Glass (Gerima, 1971)
Fine Lines (Khreino, 2019)
Bush Mama (Gerima, 1979)
Another Round (Vinterberg, 2020)
Philomena (Frears, 2013)
Filth (Baird, 2013)
Sunshine Hotel (Dominic, 2001)
Fedora (Wilder, 1978)
Pig (Sarnoski, 2021)

Finally watched EWS after long dreading and... was actually fun (despite Cruise being a smirking twerp, as ever). The Mekas was the easiest 5-hour watch I can remember, loved it.

Azor (Fontana, 2021) 8/10
Wrath of Man (Ritchie, 2021) 7/10
Cloud Atlas (Warchowski/Tyler, 2012) 7/10
*The Irishman (Scorsese, 2019) 10/10
Health (Altman, 1980) 5/10
*Dr T and The Women (Altman, 2000) 7/10
OC and Stiggs (Altman, 1987) 8/10
Secret Honor (Altman, 1984) 7/10
Thieves Like Us (Altman, 1974) 7/10
*Bohemian Rhapsody (Singer, 2018) 2/10
A Rainy Day in New York (Allen, 2019) 3/10
*The Graduate (Nichols, 1967) 8/10
Red Rocket (Baker, 2021) 8/10
The Harder They Fall (Samuel, 2021) 5/10

Benedetta (2021) 4/5
Mighty Peking Man (1977) 3/5
Black Book (2006) 4/5
Days (2020) 2.5/5
Platform (2000) 4.5/5
The Day He Arrives (2012) 4/5
Licorice Pizza 3.5/5
King Boxer/Five Fingers of Death (1972) 4/5
* The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) 4/5
* The Lion in Winter (1968) 3.5/5
It's a Wonderful Life (1946) 5/5. first complete viewing
* The Shop Around the Corner (1940) 5/5
Throw Down (2004) 4/5
* Only Angels Have Wings (1939) 4/5

Shorts by Niki Lindroth von Bahr, in order of preference:
The Burden
Bath House
Tord and Tord
Something to Remember

Shorts by Vitoria De Seta:
Islands of Fire
The Forgotten

Licorice Pizza...My fellow audience gasped in dismay at the John Michael Higgins scenes.
― reggae mike love (polyphonic)

Unbelievable. I've defended Lost in Translation, and will continue to do so, but a 2021 version of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, I don't get that at all.

don't think i saw the Muppet Christmas carol in any of the listings this year. is it another thing that disappeared from free tv like Elf?

anyway, continuing December

Parasite (Korean Oscar winner)
Battles Without Honour and Humanity (chaotic Yakuza film)
Stephen (technically a miniseries about the Stephen Lawrence case)
Anna and the Apocalypse (zombie musical)
Dreams of a Life (documentary about the woman found dead in her flat after 3 years)
Ready Player One (lost interest half way through)
Floating Clouds (naruse, 1955)

December:

Drive a Crooked Road (Quine, 1954) 7/10 BLU-RAY - part of Indicator's Columbia Noir 1 set
*Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956) 8/10 BLU-RAY
Madhouse (Clark, 1974) 6/10 DVD
Convict 99 (Varnel, 1938) 6/10 DVD - Will Hay comedy
The Power of the Dog (Campion, 2021) 7/10 NETFLIX
Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma, 1974) 6/10 BLU-RAY
Where is the Friend's House? (Kiarostami, 1987) 9/10 BLU-RAY - part of Criterion's The Koker Trilogy set
The House That Dripped Blood (Duffell, 1971) 6/10 DVD - part of the Amicus 'coffin' collection
Sabata (Parolini, 1969) 7/10 BLU-RAY - part of the Eureka Sabata Trilogy collection
Criss Cross (Siodmak, 1949) 8/10 BLU-RAY
Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion ((Ito, 1972) 7/10 BLU-RAY - part of Arrow's Complete Female Prisoner Scorpion collection
Twentieth Century (Hawks, 1934) 9/10 BLU-RAY - one of the all-time great comic performances from John Barrymore here
Fascination (Rollin, 1979) 8/10 DVD
Wuthering Heights (Wyler, 1939) 6/10 DVD
See No Evil aka Blind Terror (Fleischer, 1971) 7/10 DVD
Free Hand for a Tough Cup (Lenzi, 1976) 8/10 BLU-RAY - one of the most likeable Poliziotteschis, with Tomas Milian wonderfully over the top as his hippy crook 'Garbage Can' character, plenty of action, and a minimum of misogyny
Bless This House (Thomas, 1972) 6/10 DVD

LOL Tough COP

Watched Godzilla vs Kong last night; completely idiotic. 2/10 at best.
Watching The Hitcher (the original version) this morning. One of Rutger Hauer's best performances, in a genuinely frightening movie. 8/10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZlmjZ-rIBU

My Generation 2017
Documentary on the 60s presented by Michael Caine and with input from Twiggy, David Bailey, Mary Quant and a few others.
It was written by Dick Clement and Ian le Frenais which I only noticed on end credits.
Quite watchable and captured a lot of the spirit of why I got into the decade I think.
Was on BBC tonight not sure what release it got at the time it came out.

Swan Song: Udo Kier plays a hairdresser who comes out of retirement to make up Linda Evans' corpse at her request. Really well done.

One False Move (8.0)
13 Going on 30 (5.5)
Zola (6.5)
Atlantic City (7.5)
Urgh! A Music War (5.5)
Il Posto (9.0)
The Lady from Shanghai (7.5)
Don’t Look Up (5.5)
Licorice Pizza (6.0)
Where Are We? Our Trip Through America (7.5)
Breaking Bad (S1-S5: 8.5)

Tired Feet (Gillstrom, 1933)
False Impressions (Pearce, 1932)
Business and Pleasure (Butler, 1932)
I'll Be Alone After Midnight (de Baroncelli, 1931)
Fine Manners (Milestone & Rossson, 1926)
The Black Watch (Ford, 1929)
Drive My Car (Hamaguchi, 2021)
Sin's Pay Day (Seitz, 1932)

non-christmas december

Computer Chess (2013) 4/10
The Power of the Dog (Campion, 2021) 9/10
Black Widow (Nunnally Johnson, 1954) 5/10
The Matrix Resurrections (Wachowski, 2021) 7/10
Lady on a Train (Charles David, 1945) 8/10
The Innocents (script by Capote, Jack Clayton, 1961) 8/10
Man on a Swing (Frank Perry, 1974) 6/10 a vehicle for joel grey to show off in

Anyone else see "Ascension"? Hypnotically beautiful narrative free doc about labor and aspirational capitalism in contemporary China. I think it's on Paramount. Good score from Dan Deacon.

Kate. Mary Elizabeth Winstead kills half the gangsters in Japan while trying to figure out who poisoned her...so, half John Wick, half Crank. A little long at an hour 45, but made with real love of the action-movie craft.

East of Eden (Kazan 1955)
Night and the City (Dassin 1950)
Testament of Orpheus (Cocteau 1960)
Devi (Ray 1960)
Jennifer's Body (Kusama 2009)
Please Vote for Me (Chen 2007)
Get Back (Jackson 2021)
The Black Cat (Ulmer 1934)
The Chalk Garden (Neame 1964)
The Raven (Friedlander 1935)
The Power of the Dog (Campion 2021)
*The Red Shoes (Powell, Pressburger, 1948)
Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over (Beth B, 2019)
The Mystery of Picasso (Clouzot 1956)
Thunder Road (Ripley 1958)
Pig (Sarnoski 2021)
Somewhere in the Night (Mankiewicz 1946)
The Matrix Resurrections (Wachowski 2021)
The Bandit (Lattuada 1946)
* Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman 1975)
Topaz (Hitchcock 1969)
Sunday Bloody Sunday (Schlesingre 1971)
*The English Patient (Minghella 1996)
Les Vampires (Feuillade 1915-1916)

Is Les Vampires worth the time?

I'd say barely. They pull you in with the shorter early chapters before the later ones which are close to an hour each. Musidora as Irma Vep has great villainous screen presence, and Marcel Lévesque as Mazamette is terrific comic relief.

Fern Silva’s enjoyable tone-poem essay Rock Bottom Riser (2021 and no obvious relation to the song that I could hear) is a hour-long, occasionally dreamlike exploration of Hawaiian cultural and scientific colonialism with particular emphasis in volcanology and astronomy. Silva enjoys underlining interesting parallels and making his points quietly so we get an interview with the Rock about island activism on a television in a hotel room, a bunch of vapers popping smoke rings juxtaposed with underwater thermal vents, the crawl of magma across the countryside and a group of white creative writing students listening rapt to Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock.” There’s also considerable attention to traditional methods of way finding and stargazing and the intrusion of Western telescopes on sacred ground but much of the heart here is devoted to the awesome power of molten rock, with deep love for it’s velcro sound in motion, it’s psychedelic tearing and merging and its raw bully spread. Repeated scenes of streets overlaid with messy heaps of fresh black stone suggest that we may be more a part of the natural world than we think.

Mario Furloni and Kate McLean’s Freeland (2020) offers the sprawl of verdant and wild forest as a contrast to the capitalist order of the factory farm. We are meant to find the rhyme with Devi, the hippy sexagenarian and last woman standing at the outskirts of a California commune that she’s crafted into a small but functioning pot crop. Devi has pledged allegiance to the art of crafting an artisanal strain (this year’s is called “God’s Pussy”) and harvesting with a crew of three kids. When the city puts the squeeze on Devi she finds herself outside the legal grow network and unable to compete in a world that devalues everything she stands for. There’s a better film somewhere inside this one that meditates more clearly on the concept of obsolescence as a kind of violence. The striking Krisha Fairchild, playing Devi, does a great job of conveying that sentiment not via dialogue but through some lovely acting and interaction with her beautifully set dressed home; the verisimilitude of her hunt for hidden hundred dollar bills stashed throughout the decrepit estate is worth the price of admission all by itself. The issues here can mostly be ascribed to filmmakers so concerned with their vision being seen that they become overbearing: constant close-up, low angles on the indoor sequences intended to emphasize the paranoia and discomfort get repetitive and cramped, making the long view nature shots feel strangely sterile. The tone and story have a hard time synching, which isn’t helped by the on-the-nose music and the heavy specter of A24 visuals. The latter issue rears its head as trademark dark foreboding, turning the second half of the movie into terrible stress weed and paranoid freakout aimed at a broadly painted villain. As the film starts to eat its own tail in desperation, there’s a sense that the directors and not the lead character has lost its way, bogged down in nostalgia instead of building nuance and providing much needed plot.

The Saga of Gosta Berling (Stiller, 1924)
The County Fair (Tourneur, 1920)
For the Love of Mike (Banks, 1932)
Don't Bet on Love (Roth, 1933)
Beyond the Rocks (Wood, 1922)
Monsieur Beaucaire (Olcott, 1924)
*Wife and Auto Trouble (Henderson, 1916)
*Bad Boy (McCarey, 1925)

+1 for Ascension, xp, was amazing. Cool that Sheila Nevins/MTV picked it up.

Behind the Makeup (Milton & Arzner, 1930)
The Marriage Playground (Mendes, 1929)
The Pointing Finger (Pearson, 1933)
Strangers in Love (Mendes, 1932)
Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (Irving, 1917)
Kiss Me Again (Seiter, 1931)
Raffles (Baggot, 1925)

The Final Girls (2015) 5/10
Rare Exports (2010) 6/10
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (Irwin Allen, 1979) 4/10 the movie he did after The Swarm stung him. really dumb but what a cast - Michael Caine, Telly Savalas, Peter Boyle, Karl Malden, Sally Field being Sally Field, Slim Pickens as drunk Slim Pickens.
Saint Maud (2019) 6/10
Encanto (Disney co., 2021) 5/10 great music. all of the characters are dicks.
half of *The Animatrix (various, 2003) but I stopped because it was boring. one segment features voice actors Hedy Burress and Phil Lamarr which I want to think is a joke.

The Mother and The Whore (1973) 5/5
* Chimes at Midnight (1965) 5/5
Radio On (1979) 4/5. Totally shameless Wim Wenders homage but the restoration looks fantastic.
Asako I & II (2018) 3.5/5
* An American in Paris (1951) 4/5
Under the Volcano (1984) 4/5
Love & Basketball (2000) 4/5
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) 3.5/5
Once Upon a Time in China (1991) 4.5/5

BuyBust, a Filipino drug-war action extravaganza from 2018. A squad of cops raids a slum searching for a drug dealer, but he's been tipped off and mobilizes not just his own soldiers, but pissed-off slum residents, against them and they have to fight their way out. Tons of shooting, but later also tons of hand-to-hand combat with knives, bats, household objects, etc. The wildest thing about it was when I found out that the filmmakers built the whole slum — it was something like an 8000 square meter mazelike set. That's when it went from an excellent post-The Raid, post-Michael Mann crime/action movie to a Hard To Be A God-level masterpiece.

Double Trouble (Cabanne, 1915)
Mr. Fix-It (Swan, 1918)
The Night of the Party (Powell, 1934)
They Never Come Back (Newmeyer, 1932)
The Blue Eagle (Ford, 1926)
The Souvenir: Part II (Hogg, 2021)
Back Stage (McGowan, 1923)
Should Sailors Marry? (Parrott, 1925)

Wow, some great January takes, thanks yall! Forks on Freeland, re actress and storyline somewhat at odds with insecure directing reminds me of having seen Let's Scare Jessica To Death (on TCM) starring the remarkable Zora Lampert, with filmmakers---surefooted re backstory, setting, cinematography, casting, maybe not concept-wrangling---as well as on-screen randos, adding a bit much to keeping Jessica and the audience off-balance: is she having another breakdown, did she fool everybody into thinking that she was cured, to get out of the nuthouse, is she being gaslighted, are the supernatural baddies really that? Thee ending--well, whole thing was well worth watching, I thought. And there's not that much Lampert to be found.

Watched Nobody on HBO Max yesterday. Really well put together, and I'm really happy they got the one thing right that every other movie gets wrong — at one point the title character is driving away from the villains and they're shooting at him, and the bullets shatter the car's back window, and they also pierce the windshield. In most movies, it's like the back seat of the car is a portal into another dimension; bullets come in through the back window and then they just dematerialize. This movie got that right. It has lots of other good qualities, too.

Tonight I watched Sidney Lumet's Q&A on Hulu. I hadn't seen that in 30 years and several scenes were stuck in my memory almost shot for shot. Nick Nolte is absolutely terrifying in it, and Luis Guzman is really, really good, too. The dialogue is singe-your-ears racist and homophobic, but if you're not a moral child like the people who talk about movies on Twitter, it's a really solid crime-and-corruption story.

Midway, although i am way less than midway through it.

"Four years later the world was at war", well yes, would be more accurate to say 4 years later the world had been at war for nearly 4 years. pearl harbor was not the start of wwii.

dialogue also very quiet, like inaudible. and the guy from cheers has just turned up.

Enjoyed The Tragedy of Macbeth tremendously. Nonstop entertainment, superslick everything, great performances.

The Unforgivable (5.5)
Minding the Gap (6.5)
Paranoid Park (6.5)
Mona Lisa Smile (6.0)
Impeachment: American Crime Story (6.0)
Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer (6.0)
The Assistant (7.0)
The Conversation (10.0)
Drive My Car (7.0)
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (7.5)

The Witching Hour (Hathaway, 1934)
The Midnight Lady (Thorpe, 1932)
The Midnight Girl (Noy, 1925)
Border Romance (Thorpe, 1929)
The Gaucho (Jones, 1927)
Love ’Em and Leave ’Em (Tuttle, 1926)
Tell Me Tonight (Litvak, 1933)

Seized. Director Isaac Florentine and performer Scott Adkins have made a bunch of movies together; some are really good, others are not. This is one of the latter; it feels pretty phoned-in to me. Adkins' son is kidnapped by a cartel leader (played with great realism by Mario Van Peebles) who forces him to kill his rivals and strap a camera to his chest so he can watch and the audience gets some first-person-shooter action. There are some decent John Wick-ish fight scenes — it's still a Scott Adkins movie — but it's nowhere near the greatness of the two Debt Collector movies or Accident Man, all of which were directed by Jesse V. Johnson, not Florentine.