Last (x) movies you saw

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".

The Sweatbox (2002, Styler) An incomplete look at the troubled production of The Emperor's New Groove. Directed by Sting's wife and featuring lots of Sting (who thankfully got cut out of the Disney film).
Lockout (2012, Mather & St. Leger)
Commando (1985, M.L. Lester)
High Anxiety (1977, Brooks)
Star Trek: Generations (1994, Carson) Saw most of it previously in bits and pieces on TV. Data's emotion chip subplot is actually connected to the main plot (weakly, in that getting everything you want can out to be a mixed blessing) but the whole idea of the Nexus is still stupid. I'd rank this as the second worst ST film, worst being Nemesis.
Dracula (1931, Browning) rewatch
Drácula (1931, Melford)
Nosferatu (1922, Murnau) rewatch

a zed and two noughts (greenaway, 1986)
weekend (godard, 1967)
two or three things i know about her (godard, 1967)
the virgin spring (bergman, 1960)
the vanishing (sluizer, 1988)

Happy People, the new Herzog (sorta, it's mostly his voiceover and input on other people's work; less a film he did than grizzly man really) is good but not great, kinda minor. Grim and beautiful though. The lives of Russian trappers living in the most remote hearts of Siberia. Engaging. Light on wow.
Kinda interesting that one of A Tarkovsky's relatives is one of the trappers. Wonder if that's how the filmmakers connected?

clouds is such a cool guy, need ur hand held for weekend.

The General (Keaton, 1926) 4/5
Sherlock Jr. (Keaton, 1924) 5/5
Beau Travail (Denis, 1998) 1.5/5
Zero Dark Thirty (Bigelow, 2012) 3.5/5
Breathless (Godard, 1960) 4/5

Amour
Forty Shades of Blue
Keep The Lights On
The Gospel According to St Matthew

Life Of Pi (Lee, 2012) 4/5
Contact (Clarke, 1984) 4/5
Christine (Clarke, 1986) 4/5 (rewatch)
Django Unchained (Tarantino, 2012) 4/5

howdya like the Sachs movies, alfred?

KTLO more than Forty Shades of Blue. The latter doesn't survive the casting of the Russian woman and doesn't know what to do with Rip Torn's character and performance; tonally it's off.

I thought she was great! in Last Resort too.

I remember spending the entirety of Forty Shades of Blue thinking "ok, I SHOULD like this..."

Liked Married Life pretty well, though, and wanna see his latest.

Rip Torn as a country songwriter-producer -- how can the results be so uninvolving?

Thieves Like Us (3.5/5): If someone else gave it 5/5, I wouldn't argue. It's basically a perfect film--certainly less scattershot than The Long Goodbye or California Split. Which is also its limitation; it just didn't engage me the way those two films do. (I think this was my third viewing, separated by many years.) Great performances all around, sad ending.

California Split (4.5/5): The buddy-buddy knowingness crosses the line a couple of times into Husbands territory (for me, not a good thing), Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles are cartoonish (Welles is affecting anyway), and even though the Bert Remsen scene still makes me laugh, I realize it's also dated and probably deeply offensive. But I continue to love all the rest. One example of a kind of perfection found here and nowhere else that I can think of: Gould and Segal's back-and-forth on the Lakers-Suns game.

Women in Revolt (1971, Morrissey) 6/10
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978, Schepisi) 8/10
Sleepless Night (2011, Jardin) 7/10
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Welles, RKO hacks) 9/10
Hors Satan (2011, Dumont) 3/10
Something Wild (1961, Garfein) 7/10
The Face Behind the Mask (1941, Florey) 6/10
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948, Ophuls) 10/10
Haywire (2011, Soderbergh) 7/10
The Cool World (1963, Clarke) 9/10
Sweet Love, Bitter (1967, Danska) 6/10
The Day He Arrives (2011, Hong) 6/10
The Living Koheiji (1982, Nakagawa) 7/10
The Arabian Nights (1974, Pasolini) 7/10
Wreck-It-Ralph 6/10
The Queen of Versailles 5/10

The Kid with a Bike (2011) 4/5
Miami Connection (1987) 2/5
Lincoln (2012) 3.5/5
A Man Vanishes (1967) 3/5
Footnote (2011) 4/5
Gueule d'amour (1937) 3.5/5
Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932) 3.5/5
Black Girl (1966) 3/5
The Blade (1995; 2nd viewing) 4.5/5
The X From Outer Space (1967) 1/5

Black Girl is a masterpiece of Sembene's

I watched Punchline last night and realized once again that I am likely the only person on earth who likes Punchline.

Who wouldn't believe Sally Field as a comic?

All of the Oscar short film nominees in animated and live action categories + Inocente in the doc short category. Not a crazy distinguished lot this year, if you ask me.

Oh, and as good as Letter to an Unknown Woman is, it will never be as close to my heart as Women in Revolt.

well, i'd assume

Jackie Curtis has p much all the great moments tho

Jackie and Holly are a fantastic team in their big two-hander.

J: "There are certain social structures, Holly, that we have to adhere to that we dont."
H: "I HATE YOU YOU MOTHERFUCKER!"

yeah and some of Holly's sex scenes are hair-tossing fits, but I like Jackie under Mr America: "I think i'm gonna go."

Of all your grades, the one I most can't parse is 7 for the movie Soderbergh made last year for the straight guys.

boy a (2007, john crowley) 3.5/5
the pursuit of happiness (1971, mulligan) 3/5
a safe place (1971, jaglom) 2/5
la promesse (1996, dardennes) 4/5
out of sight (1998, soderbergh) 3.5/5
rust and bone (2012, audiard) 3.5/5
somersault (2004, cate shortland) 3.5/5
wake in fright (1971, ted kotcheff) 2.5/5
little birds (2012, elgin james) 3/5
ploy (2007, ratanaruang) 3.5/5
friday night (2002, denis) 3/5

Of all your grades, the one I most can't parse is 7 for the movie Soderbergh made last year for the straight guys.

I enjoyed seeing Michael Fassbender get the death penalty for Shame.

Of course, Women in Revolt gets docked a bit for reactionary anti-feminism and an unusually misogynistic tone even for drag.

That comes part and parcel with all Paul Morrissey movies, though. They are all wholly reactionary works of art. That also happen to work fantastically as camp. In fact, the one hand washes the other on that account afaic.

well i hate camp

but Sontag defined camp as being UNINTENTIONAL, right?

Pretty sure she disowned everything about that article the moment the first drag queen read it.

well i hate camp

H: "I HATE YOU YOU MOTHERFUCKER!"

The last movie I saw was "Ten Canoes" on DVD a few days ago. It is a fable set in pre-Westernized Australia and all the characters are aboriginal. The story is told extremely simply, but its simplicity is so whole and complete that it becomes a great virtue. I really liked it.

The last few movies before that were... I forget.

http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/102165/1302233/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind.jpg

Zero Dark Thirty, pretty good though I don't feel over-sympathetic to the main protagonists, torturers etc.
Wondered where I recognised th eguy who's doing the torturing in the first scene from but remembered he was th e3rd brother in Lawlesss on the way home.
Thought it was a pretty well-made film but maybe the politics just disagreed with me.

Continuing my trek through childhood faves that there is no way I should have ever been allowed to watch at the time, tonight I reconfirmed that The Last Boy Scout is still awesome.

ikiru is as good as i remembered it

Good run with a couple of turkeys for good measure.

Dredd (Travis, 2012) B+
Now Voyager (Rapper, 1942) B
Annie (Houston, 1982) D
Down By Law (Jarmusch, 1986) A
Henry Fool (Hartley, 1996) B. Keen to see the sequel 'Fay Grim', which looks interesting to say the least.
Detached (Kaye, 2011) C-
Babylon (Rosso, 1980) B (A for the soundtrack)
Tabu (Gomes, 2012) B
The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1938) B+
Back Stages (Arbuckle, 1919) B
Holy Motors (Carax, 2012) A-

There is very little to recommend Fay Grimm, unfortunately, and I say this as someone who considers Henry Fool one of the best films if the 90s.

That's a shame. What's the problem with it? Do the dutch angles ruin it or is something more systemic?

Ridiculous plot, forced political "commentary," no need to exist.

Part-time Work of a Domestic Slave (Kluge, 1971) - this has a harrowing abortion scene with the rest of the story placing the protagnist right in the middle of gender/class politics and activism. Its told in an elliptic fashion and the last scene I can't even make up an interpretation for, which makes it all the more interesting to me.

Some other stuff which I can't remember (6/10)