Last (x) movies you saw (II)

april. didn't watch much.

Magnificent Obsession (Sirk, 1954) 7/10
The Dirt Bike Kid (1985) 5/10 E.T. with a magic motorcycle
The Exorcist III (Blatty, 1990) 6/10
Big Fan (Robert D. Siegel, 2009) 6/10
The French Dispatch (Anderson, 2021) 7/10
The Northman (Eggers, 2022) 8/10

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) 4.5/5. Don't recall the last time I saw a triptych film like this that actually felt like it had the craft and power of observance of a short story collection. Ever?
Double Team (1997) - 3.5/5
The Northman (2022) 3.5/5
The Executioner (1963) 4.5/5. Great idea for a black comedy from Franco's Spain: guy who ends up responsible for executions does everything he can to get out of doing them.
Memoria (2021) 4.5/5. Needs to be seen in a theater, at home, on a laptop, smart fridge, wherever they'll let you see it.
El Planeta (2021) 2/5. Good example of it being a bad sign when someone with performance art and video installations on their resume decides it's time to start making feature films.
Daughters of Darkness (1971) 2/5. Boring.

Possession (Zulawski, 1981): the new 4k restoration is out on a region free Australian Blu-Ray, so I bought one on eBay. It looks fantastic, and of course it's completely fucking bonkers and one of the most emotionally raw movies I've ever seen. Adjani is incredible, but so is Sam Neill - he looks like a drowned corpse.

Old Spanish Customers (Lane, 1932)
Rainbow Over Broadway (Thorpe, 1933)
The Song of Ceylon (Wright, 1934)
The Meanest Gal in Town (Mack, 1934)
Jubilee (Jarman, 1978)
The Suitor (Semon & Taurog, 1920)
Flies (Fleischer, 1922)
Stupid, But Brave (Arbuckle, 1924)

April:
Dr Who and the Daleks (Flemyng, 1965) 6/10 DVD
*Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980) 7/10 BLU-RAY
The Garment Jungle (Sherman/Aldrich, 1957) 7/10 BLU-RAY
Where There's a Will (Beaudine, 1936) 6/10 DVD
Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (Flemyng, 1966) 5/10 DVD
Muddy Track (Shakey, 2015) 7/10 DVD
Up in the World (Carstairs, 1956) 5/10 DVD
The Brotherhood of Satan (McEveety, 1971) 7/10 BLU-RAY
No Time to Die (Fukunaga, 2021) 4/10 PRIME
Modern Romance (Brooks, 1981) 7/10 BLU-RAY
City of God (Meirelles and Lund, 2002) 8/10 DVD

Fabian: Going to the Dogs (Graf, 2021)
Dancers in the Dark (Burton, 1932)
Grand Canary (Cummings, 1934)
The Big Shot (Sedgwick & Murphy, 1931)

Salinger (6.0)
The Batman (5.5)
Backpack Full of Cash (6.0)
Cow (6.0)
Kingpin (7.5)
All My Puny Sorrows (5.5)
Peppermint Soda (7.0)
Petite Maman (6.0)
Inland Empire (5.0)
Affliction (9.0)

Carnival Lady (Higgin, 1933)
Inland Empire (Lynch, 2006)
The Night Club (Iribe & Urson, 1925)
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (Yates, 2022)

May so far:

Smiley Face (Araki, 2007|) 5/10
Dog Eat Dog (Schrader, 2016) 6/10
Elevator to the Gallows (Malle, 1958) 8/10
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi, 2021) 8/10
We're All Going to the World's Fair (Schoenbrun, 2021) 6/10
*Miami Blues (Armitage, 1990) 9/10
*The Dead Zone (Cronenberg, 1983) 8/10

St. Louis Woman (Ray, 1934)
While Paris Sleeps (Dwan, 1932)
The Man From Toronto (Hill, 1933)
By Appointment Only (Strayer, 1933)
On Your Guard (Crone, 1933)
Cyrano de Bergerac (Genina, 1925)
All Stuck Up (Maire, 1930)
Daughter of the Dragon (Corrigan, 1931)

Behind Stone Walls (Strayer, 1932)
The Curtain Falls (Lamont, 1934)
Cross Streets (Strayer, 1934)
Oft in the Silly Night (Gillstrom, 1929)
The Framing of the Shrew (Gillstrom, 1929)
Broadway (Fejos, 1929)
The Bob's Burgers Movie (Bouchard & Derriman, 2022)
House on Haunted Hill (Castle, 1959)
Ambassador Bill (Taylor, 1931)

may so far

Merrily We Go To Hell (Arzner, 1932) 7/10
Million Dollar Legs (1932) 8/10
Wait Until Dark (1967) 5/10
All That Jazz (Fosse, 1979) 9/10
Police Story (1985) 7/10
Police Story 2 (1988) 5/10
Parallel Lives (1994) 3/10 tv movie with a lot of big names
Rescue Rangers (2022) 5/10

i will likely see top gun maverick on tuesday

Top Gun: Maverick 4/5. The US government and the New York Times Editorial Board must be thrilled so many people are seeing a movie about the dangers of uranium enrichment.
* Army of Darkness (1992) 2.5/5. The Bruce Campbell fanboy was a real forerunner to the idiots we have to hear from now.
Jackass 4.5 3.0 (not to be confusing)
Hard Target (1993) 4/5
Ste. Anne (2021) 2.5/5 - saw a comment on letterboxd that Grouper would love this movie and that sounds accurate. Emphasis seemed to be more on the film stock than its ostensible story for me though.
The Quick and the Dead (1995) 3/5
Le Naivre Night (1979) 2/5 A Marguerite Duras joint. I might appreciate it better on a second viewing after I realized the extent to which the narration had nothing to do with the images on screen but it was just too boring.
The Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks (2022) 3/5
That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) 3/5
* Cuadecuc, Vampir (1971) 3.5/5. Cool, abstract documentary about the filming of a Jess Franco vampire movie with Christopher Lee. No dialogue until the very end when Lee reads a bit from Stoker's Dracula novel.
* Evil Dead II (1987) 4/5
The Girl Can't Help It (1956) 3.5/5

Finally got to see The Northman a few days ago.
Seems to cater to the macho thing quite a bit. THough not sure if that would want happy endings etc.
Quite good I guess. Not sure how well it stands as the next film after The Lighthouse.
Pretty bloody.

Penda's Fen (Clarke 1974) 5/5
By Our Selves (Kotting 2015) 3/5
The Big Sleep (Hawks 1946) 5/5
Enter the Dragon (Clouse 1973) 5/5
The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles 1942) 4/5
Drive (Winding Refn 2011) 3/5
A Canterbury Tale (Powell & Pressburger 1942) 4.5/5
Police Story (Chan 1985) 3.5/5
The Velvet Underground (Haynes 2021) 4.5/5
The Lady From Shanghai (Welles 1947) 4/5
Top Gun: Maverick (Kosinski 2022) 5/5

The madness of ratings writ large but fuck I had a good time with Top Gun. Enter the Dragon isn't a 5* either but it's too bound up with nostalgia to be anything else.

Am I being daft or is there no all-purpose 'I just saw this and want to shriek about it!' film thread?

Last (x) movies you saw (II)

(where x = 1)

THE BETA TEST, the latest Jim Cummings thing. For whatever my opinion's worth it's better than The (overrated) Wolf Of Snow Hollow, prolly not as great as Thunder Road, but I'm just baffled at the lack of discourse surrounding it, I thought everyone was into this boy currently

He is an amazing physical actor like in the physicality of how he delivers dialogue, but I have no idea how you could put him in anyone else's films

The Royal Family of Broadway (Cukor & Gardner, 1930)
Money Means Nothing (Cabanne, 1934)
Notorious But Nice (Thorpe, 1933)
Toot Sweet! (Goulding, 1929)
Behind the Front (Sutherland, 1926)
Crimes of the Future (Cronenberg, 2022)
Downton Abbey: A New Era (Curtis, 2022)
The Monolith Monsters (Sherwood, 1957)
Midnight Faces (Cohen, 1926)

I used to say that I had never seen Ed Harris give a bad performance, but last night I watched The Firm. Gene Hackman's streak of great performances remains unbroken, though; he's brilliant in it, his initial bravado masking crippling self-loathing. And as always he's an absolute master at letting a pause linger just a second or two too long, making it really awkward (and somewhat frightening) for the other person in the scene.

Disco Dancer (1982) 4/5. The second-highest grossing film in the history of the Soviet Union.
Fire Music: A History of the Free Jazz Revolution (2020) 3/5
'Round Midnight (1986) 4/5
Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (1967) 3/5
Karen Dalton: In My Own Time (2020) - 3.5/5
* The American Friend (1977) 4/5
From Here to Eternity (1953) 4/5

From Here to Eternity on TCM now.

How did you see Fire Music? I missed it when it played a couple of times last year, have been looking out for it since.

It's on Criterion Channel now.

Great--I have that! (And remember to check in once every three months...)

Dynamite Dan (Mitchell, 1924)
Quick (Siodmak, 1932)
Viktor und Viktoria (Schünzel, 1933)
Hot in Day, Cold at Night (Park Song-yeol, 2021)
Genius Against Violence (Frenkel, 1916)
Frankenstein 1970 (Koch, 1958)
Introduction (Hong Sang-soo, 2021)
In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo, 2021)

A Blonde's Revenge (Cline & Lord, 1926)
*The Balloonatic (Keaton & Kline, 1923)
Dude Ranch (Tuttle, 1931)
The Acid Test (Scotto, 1932)
Divorce Sweets (1933)
Uptown New York (Schertzinger, 1932)
Nell Gwyn (Wilcox, 1926)
The Last Performance (Fejos, 1929)
Man and Dog (Constantinescu, 2022)
Forbidden Planet (Wilcox, 1956)
Otto the Barbarian (Ghițescu, 2020)
Miracle (Apetri, 2021)

Ozark (S4-B – 6.0)
Hello, Bookstore (6.5)
Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres (6.0)
Atlanta (S3 – 7.0)
Better Call Saul (S6-A – 7.0)
Fire Music (6.5)
Mad Men (S1-S7 – 10.0)
Men (6.0)
Crimes of the Future (5.5)
The Capote Tapes (7.0)

A good quality Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness turned up yesterday so got to watch that.
Quite great really. Nice and trippy visuals. Wanda chewing the scenery.
Is the Multiverse going to get any further exploration in other Marvel stuff or is it just this and Spiderman.
I did have a problem with it seeming that I had to keep turning subtitles on and off. Must be other options than all on so English gets them or all off so nothing does when there are a few languages spoken. Like film actually starts in Spanish.

I enjoyed it anyway.

Loved the new Dr. Strange. Top 10 MCU for me... if I even have 10.

Really felt like reading an overstuffed 3 part Marvel mini series from back in the '80s: convoluted plotlines, wild guest stars, fun dialogue and even better visuals.

plus Sam Raimi.

Limelight (Chaplin) 6/10
*Cellular (the snakes on a plane guy) 9/10
The Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein) 8/10
Top Gun Maverick (Joseph Kosinski) 8/10
The Weekend Murders (1970) 6/10
Original Cast Album: Company (Pennebaker) 7/10 sondheim commentary track recommended
A Chorus Line (Attenborough) 7/10

also some tv
Outer Range S1 around 7/10
Moon Knight 5/10

A Chorus Line (Attenborough) 7/10

I also re-watched this one on Criterion recently and, despite the original book's handy utility as one of the great slasher-not-slasher movies, the Fame-ization of A Chorus Line will never sit right with me.

the snakes on a plane guy

the Fast Five guy and the Bone guy!

regarding ACL, I am unfamiliar with the stage musical which probably helped my opinion of the film.

While it streams on Criterion, is there any reason why A Chorus Line would be worth a watch for someone who isn't immediately moved by the promise of "Michael Douglas in a Broadway musical adaptation from the director of Gandhi?"

THE BETA TEST, the latest Jim Cummings thing.

"I am INWINCIBLE!" And something about the password being a chair. You sit on but you can't take it with you. It doesn't make sense. It sounds as if it should be rude but isn't.

I was surprised to find out he ended up directing a big chunk of Bohemian Rhapsody. That's a big step up from Edd the Duck. "Mr Flibble's very cross". You know, I remember deliberately not watching *Ghostwatch* because I didn't realise it was a drama. I thought it was going to be an actual live broadcast about ghosts with Craig McLachlan. It just didn't appeal to me at all. And so I missed the chance to see Russell Harty possessed by a demon. I still kick myself for that.

xp my answer's no

Phil Tippett's Mad God, an absolute marvel

M Butterfly (Cronenberg, 1993) 8/10
Through A Glass Darkly (Bergman, 1963) 8/10
What Am I Doing This?: A Film About Touring (Fundingsland, 2021) 6/10
Autumn Sonata (Bergman, 1978) 10/10
Hour Of The Wolf (Bergman, 1968) 8/10
*Shock Corridor (Fuller, 1963) 8/10
Winter Light (Bergman, 1963) 7/10
Pleasure (Thyberg, 2021) 6/10
Dashcam (Savage, 2021) 8/10
Murder Death Koreatown (anonymous, 2020) 6/10

xpost Looking forward to watching this but feel I need to be ... ready.

I'm tempted to go see it again tonight while it's still on the big screen.

There's a sequence close to the beginning which feels like a living Bosch painting. Just a huge amount of creativity.

Spring 2022...

Ascension (Jessica Kingdon, 2021)
Belfast (Kenneth Branagh, 2021)
Native Son (Pierre Chenal, 1951)
Central Park (Frederick Wiseman, 1989)
On the Bridge (Frank Perry, 1992)
The Straight Story (David Lynch, 1999)
Mahalia Jackson: The Power and the Glory (Jeff Scheftel, 1997)
Missile (Frederick Wiseman, 1988)
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)
Red Rocket (Sean Baker, 2021)
Sisters with Transistors (Lisa Rovner, 2020)
Marutai no onna (Jûzô Itami, 1997)
Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)
Look Away (Sophie Cunningham, 2021)
The Funeral (Jûzô Itami, 1984)
The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
The Pelican Brief (Alan J. Pakula, 1993)
National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, 2014)
Rubber Band Pistol (Jûzô Itami, 1962)
In Dog Years (Sophy Romvari, 2019)
Minamata (Andrew Levitas, 2020)
Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
Shane (George Stevens, 1953)
Great Communist Bank Robbery (Alexandru Solomon, 2004)
It Came From Aquarius Records (Kenneth Thomas, 2022)
For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close (Heather Ross, 2020)
*The Limey (Steven Soderbergh, 1999)
Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon (Yukio Noda, 1977)
Nimic (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2019)
Extraterrestrial (Nacho Vigalondo, 2011)
Wild Gunman (Craig Baldwin, 1978)
Navalny (Daniel Roher, 2022)

Possibly apocryphal story, but supposedly the copy of On The Bridge was digitized directly from Lindsay Anderson's own VHS tape. Caught up on a couple of films I really should have seen but never got around to. Ascension prob my fave of all of these.

doh! "*" on The Straight Story of course.

The Three From the Filling Station (Thiele, 1930)
*Hotel Anchovy (Christie, 1934)
The Black Abbot (Cooper, 1934)
The Pearl (d'Ursel, 1929)
There Goes the Bride (de Courville, 1932)
Public Stenographer (Callins, 1934)
Lonesome (Fejos, 1928)
Green Eyes (Thorpe, 1934)

Crimes of The Future (Cronenberg, 2022) 8/10
The Sadness (Jabbaz, 2021) 6/10
Hana-Bi (Kitano, 1997) 6/10
*The Harder They Come (Henzell, 1972) 7/10
The Image Book (Godard, 2018) 5/10
Men (Garland, 2022) 4/10

Red Ensign (Powell, 1934)
Friday the Thirteenth (Saville, 1933)
Lightnin' (Ford, 1925)
Everything All at Once (Daniels, 2022)
Attack of the Puppet People (Gordon, 1958)
Lumiere d'Ete (Gremillion, 1943)

Viewing way down in 2022.

The Batman (Reeves 2022)
Drive My Car (Hamaguchi 2021)
Please Hold (Davila 2021)
Suicide Squad (Gunn 2021)
Million Dollar Legs (Cline 1932)
The Cocoanuts (Florey, Santley 1929)
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (Hara 1974)
*Miller's Crossing (Coen 1990)
Black Belt Jones (Clouse 1974)
The Rise & Fall of the Clash (Garcia 2012)
Memoria (Weerasethakul 2021)
The Northman (Eggers 2022)
Motian in Motion (Kelly 2020)
Ladies' Man (Mendes 1931)
Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Raimi 2022)
Fire Music (Surgal 2021)
What is man and what is guitar? (Burnett 2021)
Chan Is Missing (Wang 1982)
Good Luck To You, Leo Grande (Hyde 2022)
Possessor (B. Cronenberg 2020)
The Hole (Tsai 1998)
Foreign Intrigue (Reynolds 1956)