Last (x) movies you saw

Go see some films day:
Samsara - I might've dozed through a bit of the early parts of this, but it's a decent companion piece to Baraka. A little surprised by the reviews saying it was pretty but no message - it seemed to be clearly saying "Here is the state of humanity in 2012: Better luck next time, eh?"

Brave - I'm amused by the challop that it fails the Bechdel test, largely because it also is the Bechdel test incarnate. And a decent Pixar film as well.

Resident Evil Retribution - I'd (re/)watched and generally enjoyed the earlier films on my iPhone earlier in the month - this was actually the first one that actually felt like it would have a video game adaptation, which is not a good look for the series. Also too much Aliens in its DNA.

The Queen of Versailles - I liked that this was largely amoral on the stars - meaning that they damned themselves out of their own mouths by and large. That said, one of the shots caused a noise of disapproval such as I have never heard from a theatre.

Killing Me Softly - I'm surprised that none of the reviews I've seen have mentioned the Coens - apart from anything else, Richard Jenkins was both A+++ and reminded me of JK Simmons in Burn After Reading - except here everyone except Brad Pitt is a dope.

Stars in shorts: ugh. What was I thinking?

Assault on Precinct 13 the '05 remake.
sort of well done but nowhere near as atmospheric as the John carpenter original.
& I was wondering on the idea of original when I watched this last night. Is the Carpenter a translocation of an earlier Western or not?
Have always wondered if it was just a 50s film about a fort & Indians replayed in the modern day with gang members played as the faceless horde that would have been Indians in the original?

'05 now recasts gang as bad cops if that ain't too much of a spoiler.

it's a loose remake of Rio Bravo

Taken 2 (who cares who directed this, 2012) - I can't imagine Liam Neeson beating up anybody. Neither was his sense of direction in anyway convincing, just a way to cut down the hunt for bad Turks and the runnng time so maybe not so bad.

The trick with the shoelace and map was neat, but then you think this was some MacGyver that some idiot thought fit to bring back.

Spartacus (Kubrick, 1960) - From Stanley's best period. Love the lack of action, choosing to focus instead on comradeship and love. Lots of great scenes illustrating this, doesn't flag.

Old Boy (pretty unpleasant)
Kes (fantastic)
Contraband (so bad lol)
Lolita (good..but still processing)

Spartacus still not fully "Kubrick's" movie, it chased him outta H'wood.

Glen and Randa (1971, Jim McBride) 4/5
Moonrise Kingdom (2012, Wes Anderson) 4/5
Family Name (1997, Macky Alston) 4/5
Henry Fool (1997, Hal Hartley) 4/5
Red Rock West (1993, John Dahl) 3/5
Queen Margot (1994, Patrice Chéreau) 4/5
Magic Mike (2012, Steven Soderbergh) 3/5
Radio Unnameable (2012, Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson) 3/5
Francine (2012, Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky) 2/5
Seven (1995, David Fincher) 4/5

I had been half considering going to see Taken 2 cos of the cheap tickets to the luxury screen deal over the weekend. I then looked it up on Rottentomatoes and their totting up lead to 19% on the critics front. Seemed to have better responses from audiences though.

Not sure whether it is at all worth seeing from what you say. Shopuld I go with the critics assessment?

Did hear that they'd reversed the story from the original where he a well trained ex-Intelligence guy is ruthlessly going after his daughter who's being sold into white slavery. Which warranted a 15 certificate or wahtever the 2nd highest is these days . & instead they had him being taken and her coming after him following his instructions for which the certificate is now 12A.
Just rewatched the first one a couple of days back too, which might have led me to bothering to go to the cinema but what I'm hearing/reading makes that sound far less enthusiastic.

love henry fool

the master <-dope
the expatriate <-boilerplate
cosmopolis <-a huge disappointing turd

Was told the first Taken was 18 and had some of the violence cut to make it 12A.

Not my kind of thing really (was er, taken to see this), and don't care for Rottentomatoes so you know...sorry for not beng helpful here.

Spartacus still not fully "Kubrick's" movie

Ah ok, surprising since a lot of the narrative was that Kubrick was such a control freak and did actually exercise a lot of it (despite studios paying for his fkn vision). Maybe that's why Spartacus was good!

He was called in when Anthony Mann was fired after a couple weeks. He definitely made some of it his own, likely including some rewriting, but then there's, u know, the slaves playing with a goat.

hate spartacus

I think of Spartacus as being half Kubrick, half Nick Dennis.

Henry Fool rox

Killing Them Softly.
Mainly cos it was in the luxury cinema, same deal as last week with Anna Karenina.
Guess it's more low key than you might expect from a film with its subject matter. Does have some pretty heavy violence though and drug taking.
Think its by the same guy who did The Assassination of Jesse James....
and I think Brad Pitt is as good in it. No Nick Cave though.
I was wondering earlier if it was worth going to see a film with Pitt in it. Maybe its this permanent cold making me forgetful but he was enjoyable again. He can be very good, as he seemed to be in this.

It has Obama election speeches running through it as some form of theme, might be offputting to some.
Also has both James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta playing people falling from earlier peaks.

I'd recommend it, hope others do too.

Oh jeez I want to see Killing Them Softly, it looks really good. Based on a George V Higgins novel which I haven't read but I love friends of eddie coyle. love Andrew Dominik - he also did Chopper

the trailer looked great

The Death Of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005) - marketing this as a "black comedy" was a bit wide of the mark, it's quite a way closer to tragedy. What happened to the new wave of Romanian directors anyway? This and a couple of other films did ok then nothing else ever seems to have got international distribution.

Come And See (Elem Klimov, 1985) - ulp. War sure is hell, eh?

The Consequences Of Love (Paolo Sorrentino, 2004) - started out well as a study of isolation and loneliness, but came undone with implausible plotting. Also, I'm aware that attractive actresses sell films, but too often (like here) it comes across as middle-aged wish fulfillment when they fall for old baldy creeps.

It's Such a Beautiful Day by Don Herzfeldt is kinda wow

killing them softly looks so dope, the assassination of jesse james is great, chopper too

yeah dominik has a good track record

also BEN MENDELSOHN is in this, who I have been in love with since high school

why has this movie been out forever in other countries and not USA, that shits so backward

sorry guys, it's terrible

I DON'T BELIEVE YOU

i do want to hear some other opinions cos it's been pretty well reviewed but i thought it was a mess. I haven't seen his last one but i did enjoy Chopper (although i give Eric Bana the lion's share of the credit)

what didn't you like about it?

well it starts off pretty low-key and Eddie Coyle-ish and i was digging it but then it's just scene after scene of rambling dialogue(i know that's Higgins' thing but these really go on) interspersed with super stylised sequences soundtracked by anachronistic pop songs in a sub-Tarantino style. The political "subtext" is laughable (there's a tv or radio with Obama/Bush speechifying in the background of every practically every scene) and the whole thing just felt like a giant waste of time, especially with a cast that talented. I guess Brad Pitt is ok but he's just coasting in this thing. A lot of people are going to love it. I can tell.

Dr. Strangelove (this was brilliant and hilarious and peter sellers is god)
The Searchers
Elephant

A View to a Kill (Glen, 1985) D
Malcolm X (Lee, 1992) B
The Innkeepers (West, 2011) B+
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979) A
Sunrise (Murnau, 1927) A-
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Daldry, 2011) F
Perfect Sense (Mackenzie, 2011) A
Shallow Grave (Boyle, 1994) B-
The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1937) B

On the Road (Walter Salles, 2012) - It's a good job it's long as it took me a while to warm to it, but I liked it quite a bit in the end. It's a bit too straightforward a telling, but it is a really good looking movie with a good looking cast. Needed more of Viggo Mortensen's Burroughs character, though. 4/5

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2012) - Loved the nightime photography of the Turkish countryside. This is very much a sleepless at 3am movie. Funny, too, but overlong. 4/5

Roadgames (Richard Franklin, 1981) - "Rear Window in a truck". Good, laidback Hitchcock/Duel homage. 3/5

Not Quite Hollywood (Mark Hartley, 2008) - This is what prompted me to rent Roadgames. Entertaining doc on Australian maverick filmmaking ('Ozploitation')in the 1970s and '80s. Full of wild anecdotes and crazy clips. 4/5

A Serious Man (Coens, 2009) - Occasionally brilliant comedic farce, but so cruel and sour, and peopled only by grotesques. 3/5

Quatermass and the Pit (Roy ward Baker, 1967) - A good London movie. Slow-burning, but creepy as hell, with an amazing electronic score. 4/5

Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980) - Now plays more like a limp parody of a slasher film, but still goofy fun and some good kills. In a way it's an inversion of Psycho - it turns out the mother is the killer, who is murdering on behalf of her dead son. 3/5

V/H/S (various, 2012) - Found footage horror anthology of unoriginal stories filled with hateful characters. The Ti West segment is perhaps the best, it's also the most subtle and least 'horrific'. Just a short with a nice sense of dread, with a twist ending. otherwise the relentless misogyny is depressing. 1/5

platform (jia zhangke). a bunch of traveling chinese artists experience the transition to capitalism during the 1980s in a rural outpost. I think there were like two close-ups in the whole thing which made it confusing and really exasperating. it was excessively elliptic and the movie felt like nine hours long. there's a nice scene when they get stuck somewhere, a song starts and the train comes ... I liked that, the little political bits as well.

la voie lactée (luis buñuel). now this is how you make a film! a summary of catholic heresies through the ages with exquisite transitions in time / space, hilarious as well, 90 minutes packed with so much great stuff. it makes JZ's aesthetic vision of history pathetically weak in comparison. there is a good carlos fuentes article about it on the criterion website.

la voie lactée = Possibly my fave Buñuel -or at least the one I can watch and rewatch with equal pleasure. Though I think 13 years of Catholic schooling helped in catching many of the lol's Don Luis planted thruout like little landmines.

oh, same here. I erased most of that stuff from memory and it was v strange to see that on screen, it def added to the fun.

platform (jia zhangke). a bunch of traveling chinese artists experience the transition to capitalism during the 1980s in a rural outpost. I think there were like two close-ups in the whole thing which made it confusing and really exasperating. it was excessively elliptic and the movie felt like nine hours long. there's a nice scene when they get stuck somewhere, a song starts and the train comes ... I liked that, the little political bits as well.

i recorded some of the flute music from this film onto a tape through my stereo, & still play it sometimes. really beautiful. this is a long-feeling film, it does a lot though. like you feel it more than you go with it, somehow.

haven't seen platform (yet) but i absolutely loved jia's still life, which wasn't confusing in the slightest, or even very elliptical. in her interview w/ the wire last month laurie spiegel uses the phrase (borrowed from rhys chatham) "slow change" music - well, jia def makes slow change cinema, where v closely observed slow changes in landscape, expression, gesture can become highly meaningful, even startling.

The Man Who Left his Will on Film (Oshima, 1970) - as usual for this period it seems to draw on an absurdist theatrical concept; energetic and yet ends up feeling like a meditation on a friend's suicide; nostalgic already (the flaws and inadequacies and naivety there for all to see) for the time when film and an acitvist politics went hand in hand...

Je, tu, il, elle (Akerman, 1974) - mid-way piece between stuff like Hotel Monteray (all the time spent in a room and learning to move and not move the camera) and Jeanne Dielman, where you have the concept aligned to more meat to the plot/or what Akerman is looking to project for the world to see.

Looper - saw in teh cinema, really enjoyed it, and was totally untroubled by paradoxical complaints.

Judge Dredd - another cinema trip, again thoroughly enjoyed it; could do without 3D but that's always the case.

Back to the Future - watched most of this after realising it was on tele the other weekend (after seeing Looper); still awesome. Best time travel film ever?

Cabin in the Woods - last week's Lovefilm DVD; had an inkling regarding what it was going to do, but was pretty much blind going in as to how it would do it. laughed (in a good way) more than I jumped. Whedon and Abrams are merging into one entity in my mind.

Dune - this ruled. it is by will alone i set my mind in motion.
Distant Voices, Still Lives - i love how good the singing is in this. oh and it had an actor i recognised: pete postlethwaite!
Wings of Desire - scene in the library was beautiful.

In Like Flint - both over-the-top and also straight enough to be Austin Powers' favorite movie. The sexist portrayal of the villains didn't seem to be entirely a parody, unfortunately.

The Descent - pretty interesting that the affair is gone over in a blink-and-you-miss-it way and yet it is very important to the character motivations in the film. I preferred the first half, but the second half was also good.

Dawn of the Dead (2004) - decent, although I'm not sure why they chose this zombie movie to remake when they had no interest in the social satire.

Looper - The only cinema in town (Empire Theatres, you are the guilty party) has been turning the volume way down recently, apparently because of all the bass bleed from neighboring movies. It was too much in this one, so I walked out. Never going back there -- looks like it's home theater from now on.

this week, Sahara, Knight And Day, and Paycheck.

sahara was NOT one terrific movie despite the jeffrey lyons blurb on the back of the box. it was okay though. steve zahn was dumb. i can't believe it was two hours long. breck eisner directed it. breck's real name is michael. you'll never guess who his dad is! he is directing a movie about stretch armstrong. the stretchy toy.

knight and day was also not great and also very long. i think there were parts that were supposed to be funny. mostly i liked the gunplay. james mangold directed it. i only really liked cop land by him. i didn't see 3:10 to yuma. maybe i would like that one. he's directing the wolverine movie.

paycheck i really liked! it was also 2 hours long. uma looked weird in it! she can look really weird. i like looking at her nose though. movie wasn't great, but it had me going. i'm not a big john woo fan.

watched WARNING SIGN last night. directed by hal barwood. he wrote the screenplays for sugarland express and dragonslayer. he made a bunch of indiana jones computer games in the 90's. WARNING SIGN has sam waterston AND yaphet kotto so you know its good. plus,kathleen quinlan's unfortunate haircut. AND it had the old dude from the walking dead t.v. show in it when he was a young dude! he was even shirtless in one scene and he looked pretty sexy. man, i love the walking dead. so, he has some long-time experience with zombie-like behavior. cuz that's kinda what WARNING SIGN is about. government germ that makes people go crazy.

oh also watched a documentary last week about a 400 year old japanese sushi master. kinda boring. dude does the same thing every day for 400 years. story of my life. felt bad for his sons. they apparently have to spend 400 years doing the same thing too.

aw, i liked jiro!

Some more I watched a while ago, all at the Renoir cinema:

The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr, 2011)
Tabu (Gomes, 2012)

And yesterday:

Barbara (Petzhold, 2012) - like his last Yella. This time it depicts a 1980s East German escapade. There needs to be more at work than this? I liked the scenes where lterature was involved: the Doctor (Nina Hoss) reading Twain to one of her patients, and her being told of a story (which I looked up) by Turgenev as she visits his house.

Today I relaxed to:

Sansho Dayu (Mizoguchi, 1954) - some of the photography was truly breathtaking, as were the emotions, use of music and folk. Taken me a while but I'm finally getting hold of Mizoguchi's greatness.

watch "a story of late chrysanthemums" and "the crucifed lovers" next. devastating.

Watched Tyrannosaur the other night... brrrr...

Romancing the Stone. Forgot how funny it is.

Or rather, didn't understand how funny it is when I saw it 15 times when I was 12.

^interesting thread to be made based on this idea

rrrreally wanna see tabu
& should just get around to watching gomes' last flick instead of anticipating

I wasn't that fussed with Tabu - can't even recall what was wrong with, much less what was right, probably why I forgot about it. At least Tarr's film was relentless but still...when you make something like Satantango. In some ways I'm glad its his last. Not a bad way to go.

watch "a story of late chrysanthemums" and "the crucifed lovers" next. devastating.

― bryan "radical" ferry (clouds), Tuesday, 16 October 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just watched the former (a shagged out copy on youtube). I think what makes the devastation complete is the father's acceptance of the young girl and his reason for it: that she has been used by her son -- her sacrifice complete -- to make him into an artist: you rarely get that acknowledgment/discussion of a woman's role in a male artist's life.

I liked the suggestion (intended or not) that it might have been his four years' labour in "low-grade work" (performance troupe) that actually made him any good.

Incredible to think this was made in '39.

we're not on ILF but can we have this as its tagline: At least Tarr's film was relentless