Last (x) movies you saw

The Impossible - sobfest galore. Whole cinema sniffling from beginning. First half of movie is stunningly well done. I do understand all the racism critiques, as asians pretty much relegated to background, without any real acknowledgement of the scale of their suffering.

Silver Linings Playbook - Loved it from the get go, even the dance contest at the end.

The Hobbit: yawn. could only muster excitement for late appearance of gollum.

Life of Pi: Gorgeous movie. Tiger was the don. Go see.

Home Alone: annual xmas movie.

Sightseers: watched with boyfriend's caravanning parents. Not the best idea as I kept laughing and they were taken aback.

Network (Lumet, 1976) - I knew about 2 minutes into it that this wasnt my thing so I didnt finish it. I did enjoy the "I'm mad as hell" bit tho.
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (Ceylan, 2011) - Loved this. Loved all the Tarkovsky/Malick type bits of the fields and the apple rolling into the river. I went to that region (eastern turkey/n. iraq) last year so some of the scenes, esp. the scene of them eating and drinking at the farmhouse made me v. nostalgic.

i watched http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51yXkMwDwuL._SX500_.jpg

p bad, but it does achieve that shambolic 70s ensamble feel so i guess thats something. schwartzmann as a combo of tony roberts in annie hall and lenny bruce is good, should be in it way more

Undercurrent (Minnelli 1946), 90% melodrama/10% noir with Hepburn/Robt Taylor/Mitchum. Freeze-dried genre powder, Just Add 3 Stars and 1 Cup of Marjorie Main for a Vaguely Satisfying Soup. 4/10

Lincoln (Spielberg 2012). Really loved this, but don't have many coherent thoughts on it yet. I did like how Spielberg kept John Williams reined in this time around. 8/10

Jack Reacharound (some guy who signed Tom Cruise's I Don't Believe Dave Sim Is a Misogynist I don't believe Scientology Is Evil Petition, 2012). I'm a fool for police procedural stuff + "eat justice, sucker!" trash, so I confess to mostly enjoying this despite Cruise channeling Frank Miller channeling I'm the Goddamn Batman. 5/10

The Adversary (Satyajit Ray, 1971) - Film about a student suffering paralysis from his idealism. Its a mid-way between Pasolini's Pigsty (nothing will get done, we won't even get out of bed) and Fassbinder's Third Generation (something utterly stupid will be done). Interesting to see this now, with so many stories of grad unemployment - his protagonist's 'defiance' at the end is v appropriate for a humanist like Ray. This is also a departure for him, there are flashbacks and nightmares stretching to the almost Bunuel-like.

The 17th Parallel (Joris Ives, 1968) - where commie activist Ivens travels to document the struggle of the North Vietnamese peasant against the US (footage taken from this was used by Chris Marker in Far From Vietnam which is THE Vietnam film imo). What's striking is the role of women in the day-to-day running of the village to digging shelters to caring for their children: great shot of a mother putting a few babies to sleep as the bombs ring around, and no mistake the bombs are ALWAYS ringing around. The film has a physicality. You could accuse Ivens of an 'unreconstructed' communism and what not but he went EVERYWHERE: there are dispatches from the Spanish civil war, China (fighting the Japanese), Indonesia, Chile, films of strikes in Belgium, the condition of the poor in post-depression in the US and in among the Italian peasantry, but also short films capturing the movement of the wind and nature; and you can see also the peculiar silences learnt from those early films falling through here, where, all of a sudden a break falls upon the fairly functional narration ans testimony where he lets the camera happily record people simply doing things and living in their day-to-day grind. This is a film after all.

The end is chilling: a class of children are taught English phrases to deal with American soldiers if they are captured, as they will soon be out there, on the field of battle..

Both sound very worth seeing!

I am doing three on a match tonight in the theater, kinda excited

Shoah

Magnificent Obsession 3/5
Berberian Sound Studio 3/5
The Story of the Late Crysanthemums 5/5
Madame De... 3/5
Journey to Italy 4/5
La Grande Bouffe 4/5
Silent Night Deadly Night 3/5

story of late chrysanthemums is so good

is shoah accessible anywhere via torrentz or anything? or is it something you gotta buy?

I hadn't seen any pre-1950s Mizoguchi before, so i was kinda stunned to find that his entire style/worldview was already complete by the mid-1930s. It's heart-breaking to learn that his two other movies w/ a theatrical setting are now lost. (This was screened as part of the UK 'Early Mizoguchi' set, btw - a terrible, unrestored print, but still utterly compelling. The way that Mizoguchi moves his camera through the interior spaces is particularly amazing.)

forks, i watched the region 2 Masters of Cinema DVD of Shoah, which comes with a massive booklet, too.

http://eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/catalogue/shoah/

ZeroDarkThirty 3/5 : Barely 3. Somewhat uncompelling over all and every character was unlikeable. Detailed, though, I'll give it that.
The Mummy (1932) 5/5 : My fave Universal Monster Flick. The texture in this thing! Creepy and gorgeous.

Original Mummy's really good--Karl Freund, who shot Metropolis and Dracula (and yes, I Love Lucy). Think I wrote about it in university.

saw The Impossible in Mexico - now there's a movie that was A) really well made, B) completely unenjoyable, and C) whitewashed to a pretty uncomfortable degree (watching the Mexican crowd react to the final reveal of the "real" family that happened to be Latino was entertaining though)

how did they react

enough with the cultural genocide frogbs, the family were from spain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_Bel%C3%B3n

Original Mummy's really good--Karl Freund, who shot Metropolis and Dracula (and yes, I Love Lucy). Think I wrote about it in university.

― clemenza, Tuesday, January 15, 2013 12:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would love to read what you wrote about it, clemenza!

The strangeness of the film has stayed with me. Freund certainly brought a hazy, dark fairy tale/Old World sensibility to it. Then there are those grotesque little details that add to the chills (SPOILERS): the piece of dirt dangling from Imhotep's finger when we first see his hand enter the screen after he's revived; how we see his *entire face* wrapped as he struggles, the dog's eerie, pained howl and strange death (by cat!?) offscreen. And then that seemingly completely nonsensical ending which makes absolute sense somehow. Such an underrated film compared to the rest of the Universal Horror canon.

xp - a lot of groans and some yelling though I couldn't make out specific words. granted a lot of the audience seemed to be teenagers, many of whom were fed up with the movie about halfway through. I dunno how they'd respond to claims of whitewashing, I didn't really mind because the actors were all pretty good, but it bothered my wife a lot

(xpost) Appreciate that, CJV, but just as I expected, no, you don't. I went downstairs and dug it up. From "The Mummy, The Wolf Man, and The American Nightmare," published--typed up, on a typewriter--January 31, 1984:

"Defining normality in The Mummy--Wood stressing that 'normality' is a non-evaluative substitute for 'dominant ideology'--is less ambiguous: the heterosexual couple, Helen and Frank, and the patriarchal father/son unit, Dr. Joseph and Frank. (Helen, being the focus of the struggle between monster and normality...)"

Cue Woody Allen saying "The key word here seems to be 'normality'"--wish I could say someone confiscated the typewriter and set fire to it at that point, but it goes on. Like a lot of people, I'm sure, it took me at least five years after graduation to unlearn such inanity.

Well, thanks for the excerpt. Now you may burn the scroll : )

holy motors is no clearer on a second viewing but it's equally enjoyable

In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000) 5/5 perfect
Les Miserables (Hooper, 2012) 2.5/5
The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Puiu, 2005) 4/5 a rip roaring laugh out loud comedy! ok uh maybe not. this was brilliant. i love this poster

http://static.cinemagia.ro/img/db/movie/01/12/73/moartea-domnului-lazarescu-756295l.jpg

Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson, 2012) 4/5

Gangster Squad comic-book escapism with added violence.
& Josh Brolin looking like a young Nick Nolte, who was himself in the film though he's spread rather latitudinally so might no longer be immediately recognisable.

Quite enjoyed it though I missed th ebegining and then spent ages trying to work out when it was set. i remembered thinking i'd read that it was '49 which would make sense of the heroes being ex-army, now cops.

the cowboy guy looks like Bowie playing Tesla, was it the liquid metal Terminator actor? Knew I'd seen him somewhere.

Artists under the Big Top: Perplexed (Alexander Kluge, 1968) has such a textual density that would shame most films today, if they tried: its plot of a woman trying to set-up her own circus comes packed with quotes from Philosophy (I mean I don't know but the aphorisms I would guess come from those texts) (in rapid succession at times) and its montage starts off laying archive footage of Adolf with a foreign language (not German I don't think) version of Yesterday on the soundtrack (really I want to nerdshly compile every work that cites the Beatles from the 60s just to check on the observation they are almost always great as long as they made in the 60s, then almost total shit if made afterwards). The circus is constructed more as a happening-like event (it never becomes reality that is displayed on film, needless to say) and becomes a nightmare to even get off the ground, so the whole question of making that kind of art -- in the gap between the populist and the avant-garde -- in a capitalist society is meant to be interrogated (why not just televise it? As one of her collaborator-friend-theorist puts it), however I often had no handle on it. Ages I've worked this hard on watching a film and if it came out on the cinema today I would probably watch it again. Great, I think. Also er, perplexing.

2 or 3 Things I know About Her (Godard, 1967) - so like the Kluge it uses a skeleton of plot to go off on tangents (hey that's what the back of the DVD is telling me), chief difference is G trusts the image, or should I say its more comfortable with the ambiguities it provokes kinda deal. Perplexed has a central female protagonist too (seems like that might be true for a few of his films) but he has her reading naked in the bathtub, something G would not do.

Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (Duras, 1977) - thinking she must be the most ignored of French auteurs. Really like her ultraminimalist films (the two I've seen anyway). This is like a remake of India Song, but no characters appearing on the screen (just voices talking) (well until about 10 mins from the end two people appear and do nothing, this would be a spoiler if anyone cared) and Duras pointing her camera around what seems like an abandoned mansion close to the sea.

The tale is one of unfulfilled desire in a former French colony/Ambassadors and their wives complaining about life and the other, and such like. The VHS rip was so bad I couldn't get into it but hopefully this will get a restoration job, there are awesome shots of light in empty rooms.

Films watched in December 2012:

Life of Pi (Lee, 2012) - 3/5
The Girl (Julian Jarrold, 2012) - 2/5
The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963) - 3.5/5
Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946) - 4/5
Searching For Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul, 2012) - 3/5
Turn Me On, Dammit! (Jannicke Systad Jacobsen, 2011) - 3.5/5
Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland, 2012) - 4/5
Judge Dredd (Danny Cannon, 1995) - 1.5/5
Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier, 2012) - 4/5
Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) - 4/5

Films watched in 2013, so far:

Empire of the Sun (Spielberg, 1987) - 4/5
The Blood Beast Terror (Vernon Sewell, 1969) - 1/5
Anna Kerenina (Joe Wright, 2012) - 3/5
Forbidden Games (René Clément, 1952) - 4/5
Seven Psychopaths (Martin McDonagh, 2012) - 2.5/5
The Scapegoat (Robert Hamer, 1959) - 3/5
Force 10 From Navarone (Guy Hamilton, 1978) - 3/5

Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946) - 4/5

Watched this on TCM yesterday afternoon, so good. Was a little (actually a lot) surprised at the understated ending -- I was expecting, maybe not a shootout or anything, but a slightly more physical confrontation.

'13, so far. I can't explain my sudden desire to re-watch a few awful movies (and one surprisingly good one, considering the director) from my childhood beyond perhaps my catching Back To The Future on TV on New Years Day put me in a weirdly nostalgic mood that took a good week or so to shake.

Farewell My Concubine (Kaige, 1993) B-
Paris is Burning (Livingston, 1990)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Mulligan, 1962) A-
Parenthood (Howard, 1989) B+
The Toy (Donner, 1982) F
Good Morning, Vietnam (Levinson, 1987) D
Django Unchained (Tarantino, 2012) A-
Haywire (Soderbergh, 2012) C
Back To The Future 2 (Zemeckis, 1989) C+
Back To The Future (Zemeckis, 1985) A+

DavidM far too harsh on THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR, the scariest movie ever made

Explain yourself, DavidM!

Jiro Dreams of Sushi 6/10
Cosmopolis 7/10
Cheyenne Autumn (1964, Ford) 7/10
The Sessions 5/10
Tabu 6/10
I Wish 6/10
Norwegian Wood 5/10
Ryan's Daughter (1970, Lean) 6/10
Lord Jim (1965, Richard Brooks) 5/10
Playtime (1967, Tati) 10/10

The Producers (2005) 3.5/5
First half was great but it drags on a bit.

Inbetweeners 3/5

Moonrise Kingdom 3.5/5

Actually, on reflection - Inbetweeners is a 2.5/5 at best

THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR, the scariest movie ever made

Which was scariest, the school fancy dress moth costume, or Roy Hudd grinning and gurning and rolling his eyes as the comedy morgue attendant? Poor Peter Cushing, he called The Blood Beast Terror the worst film he ever made. Which is probably saying something.

Morbs was the Sessions as awful as the trailer makes it look?

Morbs what rating out of 10 is your threshold for "I would rather have not spent the time watching this movie", roughly?

The New World (Malick, 2005) 3.5/5 Colin Farrell, The Wrath of God
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton. 1955) 4/5 some spectacular, off-kilter photography. a delight!
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975) 4/5

http://birthstorymovie.com/home/
this was A+
really awe inspiring birth sequences, hit home pretty heavy how brainwashed i am that birth is this terrifying all-powerful horrible thing and whattayaknow maybe not

silby: 5 or under makes sense, i guess?

VG: I dunno, I didn't see the trailer. It's a disability soap w/ good acting.

Cousin Angelica (Carlos Saura, 1974) - this one is a corker, in which a man goes back to visit his grown up cousin and revives his memories of the Spanish civil war From the the wiki it had a horrendous reception in Spain. The importance of suppression in today's Spain is an issue right now!

I would also say that Proust's concept of memory (cited in the film, very obvious though) is really well dramatised, in the way the main protagonist is placed in a pressure cooker of the past and present.

The General (Keaton, 1926) - just come back from a screening w/live piano. As a 'fan' of free non-idiomatic improvisation this was a hoot as the pianist weaved his remembered licks for different types of gag (falling over to bangs, etc.)

Rain in July (Marlen Khutsiyev, 1966) - Russian new wave, just not that good. Marlen must've been obsessed with Antonionni, shed load of tracking shots, odd framings, show of architecture and the main female protagonist was made to look a bit like Vitti. Meanders about not knowing quite how political or designer blank it should be.

Wonderful, Wonderful times (Novotny, 1982) - its an Austrian made for TV movie adaptation of Jelinek's novel of the same name about a group of youths carrying on w/Clockwork Orange like behaviour in late 50s Vienna. There is a TERRIFIC scene where the girl crashes this rock n'roll night and starts playing Bach. That aside (and an appearane by Jelinek herself as a teacher) its not all that. Could be the made for TV feel, or the book wasn't all that.

Watched "Stalker" tonight. Wow. I think.

Speaking of Antonionni and Vitti (xpost), thought I'd see "Red Desert" tomorrow night.

Saw it on TV once and didn't do much for me, switched off halfway. v pretty and great looking as always though.

I've been off the art house-wagon for too long. Need to whip myself back in shape. Might as well watch it, as I've been having the blu ray laying around for close to a year. And you know, Monica Vitti and all.

I can go w/that line of reasoning myself..

I finally started A Prophet last night - didn't plan out my viewing well enough to fit in the whole movie before I had to go to bed but omg so good. 2nd half tonight.

Stalker is so fucking good

I absolutely loved cosmopolis, although the final section with paul giamatti bored me to death (no fault from any of the actors) everything before was incredible: the dialogs, interiors, characters, cgi. someone mentioned the samantha morton chapter and I totally agree! it was like 2008-2012 in a couple of minutes. best and most frightening part is I don't know whether I side with the mob or the 'villains'. spoiler: the passage from pollock to rothko was v cool.

holy motors a couple of days ago: ok that was perfect.

i enjoyed both of those

Life of Pi (4/5) : gorgeous effects work. Lovely film.
Jacques Rivette doc by Claire Denis : (5/5) I love JR and watching his face as he listens and looks around is, somehow, great cinema in itself. One
of the best docs about a filmmaker, IMHO.

(Posting from and iPad is frustrating)

is that doc available other than torrents or r2? p sure id be into it

I downloaded it off YT a year ago. Think it may still be up. It's called "The Night Watchman".