This is the thread where you list (/ talk about) the films you've seen recently.

*OtBS

Last three weeks or so.

i managed to download Terminator 3 the other week and quite enjoyed it - it has a really nice look, reminiscent of X2's slick finish at times, esp. in the Skynet building when the war starts - cleverer and generally better than i expected although actually too brief for me (maybe the length helped it tho)

Tonight I will go see Black Sunday

Last weekend I saw Ghostbusters in Central Park. It was good fun.

Touchez Pas Au Grisbi
American Splendor
Capturing The Friedmans

In backwards order (video)...

The Yakuza
Goodbye Columbus
The Quiet Man

Tonight I am seeing How The West Was Won in it's original Cinerama three-strip projection.

I am going to watch the original Insomnia tonight (on BBC4).

But

Dear Anthology Film Archives,

Please work on the changing reels things, ok?

love rosemary, Carey, and the rest of the audience

sitting in the dark depressed over family guilt and a movie I saw tonight and trying to get drunk but this wine tastes like shit, k/d

the ending is so strange. it seems to come out of nowhere, and sort of changes your persepctive on the whole film.

i don't really go to the movies.

i saw all of those films on video, except international house (a k-zany farce with burns and allen, w.c. fields, bela lugosi [!!], etc.)....

The last movie I saw was Sex, Lies, and Videotape. It's quite good and has neat droney synth music in it.

part of the Film Comment review of Catherine Breillat's new movie -

As Gaspar Noé taught us, the gates to hell can be found inside raunchy gay clubs. It's to one such disco inferno that the Woman goes to slit her wrists. Was it the popper fumes and the slutty Gaultier tank tops that drove her into the abyss? Nope: "Because I'm a woman" will suffice. Luckily, a concerned Man (Rocco Siffredi) intervenes, helps bandage her up, and chaperones her on a stroll through her murky Walpurgisnacht. Woman thanks Man with a blow job and a job offer. As an "impartial" audience, she'll pay him to spend several nights at her cliffside mansion critiquing her exposed flesh. "Watch me where I'm unwatchable."

The key word here, in more ways than one, is "unwatchable." What follows is a quasi-Sadean scenario spread - and I do mean spread - over three nights. The first night vividly one-ups Gustave Courbet's epochal crotch-canvas, The Origin of the World, and posits a bold companion piece, Finger-banging the Origin of the World. Night two dispenses with dialogue ("Your words are inept reproaches!") before sounding the swampy depths of the Woman's unmentionables with a garden tool-cum-tuning fork. Night three is an extended meditation on the use of bloody tampons as tea bags. We can be thankful, at least, that the Woman doesn't offer "biscuits." Meanwhile, the ocean outside is "roiling like a bitch in heat," and audiences are starting to roll their eyes.

Personally, as a member of the so-called impartial fraternity, I haven't had this much exposure to a vulva since I was born. So let me come clean: the moist, hairy spectacles of Anatomy of Hell made me say, "Ew!" Busted, homo!

Matador - Almodovar with a decent thriller. I can't say too much more, I guess I'm just PA'd out for now.

The Hours - the whores, more like. Who the fuck allowed this monstrosity to exist?

The Dancer Upstairs - a political revolution thriller with a heart. Real props to Malkovich, although I wonder if he chose for it to be in English b/c it's his first language or b/c of his target audience. If the latter, for shame... I really enjoyed this film - it seemed to call out a bit towards the personal impact of slow considered moves and a very well implied sword of Damocles.

Meet the Fockers - Hoffman's very enjoyable, for sure, and my bro and me were the only ones in a packed SoFlo audience laughing at the Empire Strikes Back reference, but it's more or less the same movie, no?

Kinsey - decent film that seemed to be heading towards greatness until...WHAT A HORRIBLE ENDING. What was that? So many ways to conclude a biographical film, and they pick the most inexplicably pointless one. Ah, metaphor overblown like a dead beached whale.

Sideways - Thomas Haden Church completely stole this film, and if you don't admit it, you're hanging on to American Splendor way too much. Giamatti's good, no doubt, but Church....

Return of the Jedi - I got dragged into watching the new DVD. The changed ending sucks even worse - now there're Gungans shouting "weesa free!" and Hayden is making an evil grin to Luke at the end. Otherwise, the film is painfully aged compared to my last looks at it several years ago. All the fart and belching jokes from the prequels...they started here. The delivery of most of the lines is piss poor even from Harrison. (Actually, Hamill seems to be the most pragmatic as far as how to approach the script.) Fisher clearly is having no fun. The Ewoks aren't as annoying as I remember, believe it or not, it's just that they can't interact well with characters like Leia, Han, Threepio, or Chewie. Quite frankly, I blame the pro actors - most people go with them b/c they're the heroes, but they blew the Ewoks' chances of going down well, IMHO. Jabba actually looks decent in this film b/c, well, he's a real physical puppet instead of a plasticene buncha bytes. The dancing stuff is more embarrassing than before - the new celebration music at the end, though, is starting to settle in. I don't miss Yub Nub anymore.

Monster - it's a helluva performance by Theron, but the film just really put me off in a way. Not so much the performance, or the acts, or the plot, or anything like that. I just had difficulty having sympathy for them. It just got maybe too realistic.

The Sopranos, Season Two - Tony's cleaning house. Jeah. Robert Patrick as a gambling schmuck, the whole D-Girl subplot with Chris, Livia going demented, Silvio being Silvio, Janice...ah, I could eat this all for dinner.

On deck:
Metropolis
The Last Movie
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Before Sunset

I couldn't agree more. This was the worst film of 2002. I kept thinking that the friction from Meryl Streep's fidgiting would cause her to burst into flame.

Also--at which point in his life did sunny Jeff Daniels wake up and realize, "I'm an elderly, obese queen?"

Girolamo, be sure and post your thoughts on Sex, Lies, etc. when you've seen it. I haven't seen it since it came out. I remember thinking that it was really fresh at the time. But now, I wonder. We've seen the shrewish Laura San Giacomo so much on TV now doing her horrible act--likewise Andi McDowell and Peter Galagher. Turns out too that James Spader doesn't just play creepy guys... May be interesting anthropologically.

last movie i saw was Dr. Akagi--it was very strange and im pretty sure i didnt get it at all (what's with the whale and the bomb and is the hepatitis some overarching metaphor? i dont get it!) but i was entertained.

before that House of Flying Daggers--most fun i have had in a movie theater in some time.

Star Wars - awful
Dominion: The Exorcist Prequel - not awful, but not very good

watched Videodrome last night, good, I didn't realize Debbie Harry could act that well, felt like it could have been longer to flesh out the transformation/hallucination process, it really seemed to just throw that on you and explain it away rather than proceeding organically.

Donnie Darko Special Edition
thoroughly diluted through overexplanation. The o.g. edition had mystery going for it and with that came a weird poignance, here with all the cards laid out it's just much more of an exercise and much more...annoying.
almost done with F for Fake(thanks to the Orson Welles LSD thread), very fun so far.

House of Flying Daggers - This was quite a good film! If I recall, this was meant to be Zhang Yimou's "answer" to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and while I'm not sure how it works in that regard, it does work better than that film in most ways. Zhang Ziyi is good, as she usually is, as is Takeshi Kaneshiro, but Andy Lau owns the film, despite a thankless role. Based on this and Infernal Affairs, he's grown into a far greater actor than I would have imagined based on his earlier works (of which I've only seen a small handful, admittedly).

,br>I don't feel like saying much about them, though.

: /

No, it did make up for it - that's how good it was.

I finally got round to buying - and watching - the new DVD of 'Céline and Julie go boating'. It was like an especially clever episode of Buffy - if the lead characters were Willow and Tara, and if Tara were less of a drip. High praise, indeed. I half-dread, half anticipate a Charlie Kaufman meta-adaptation that digitally inserts contemporary characters into the existing film.

I also finally got around to buying the Preston Sturges box set. 'The Lady Eve' is just grand, but what on earth does Barbara Stanwyck see in Henry Fonda? Not even Stanley Cavell can convince me of this match.

lost interest in Preminger's Laura about halfway through at the weekend too. not enough explosions.

someone mentioned a bunch of out-of-copyright / public domain films available on the interweb recently (maybe the gadget show last night). lots of old films and the odd new one that i guess the producer has gifted, Driller Killer being the one i remember.

oh, here:
http://www.publicdomaintorrents.com/nshowcat.html?category=ALL

Silent Hill - not bad at all, one of the better games/movies translations and a half decent horror flick to boot. quality ending as well.

Eternal Sunshine blah blah - yeah didn't do nothing for me im afraid.

Time to Leave - a bit dull and mawkish, but the main french guy was hot and Jeanne Moreau rules.

JtN, I also like the font on the subway signs.

I've steered clear of movies this year, but here's 2007 so far:

Canonize
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)

See
trailers from Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez/Rob Zombie/Edgar Wright/Eli Roth)
Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright)
The Simpsons Movie (David Silverman)

Consider
Black Snake Moan (Craig Brewer)
main features from Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino)
Day Night Day Night (Julia Loktev)
The Host (Joon-ho Bong)

Pass
Once (John Carney)
First Snow (Mark Fergus)
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (Mary Jordan)
Padre Nuestro (Christopher Zalla)
Congorama (Philippe Falardeau)
Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)
The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

Destroy
300 (Zach Snyder)
Rome Rather Than You (Tariq Teguia)
Creepshow III (Ana Clavell & James Glenn Dudelson)

Creepshow III????? oouf!!!

This year I've only seen:

The Departed
Pan's Labyrinth
28 Weeks Later (pretty good for a movie, very good for a modern horror film, excellent for a sequel)
Hairspray (fun, but Travolta sucks at being a chick)
The Simpsons Movie (fucking hilarious)

where's a good list of movies released this year?

best was absolutely Killer of Sheep, second best was Death Proof or Pan's Labyrinth (was it a 2007 release?)

IMDb must have a list somewhere.

Past few weeks:

1. Little Miss Sunshine - sweet. I did not expect that ending but it really couldn't have ended another way. :)
2. Blades of Glory - skip.
3. Pan's Labyrinth - Loved it.
4. Harry Potter V - I liked it better before I read the final book. Needs more wand battles.
5. The Simpsons movie - Excellent! Way funnier than I expected it to be.
6. The Devil and Daniel Johnston - Good. I'm not much of a Daniel Johnston fan but this was pretty harrowing.
7. Alpha Dog - Justin Timberlake was good in this but otherwise, hilariously terrible.

DVDs I have but haven't watched yet:
1. Cronenberg's Stereo/Crimes of the Future
2. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
3. A Scanner Darkly
4. Howl's Moving Castle
5. Touchez Pas Au Grisbi

I watched Da Vinci Code last night. Wow.