Last (x) movies you saw

Les mIserables
Had been meaning to see it for months to see what it was like.
Visually qyuite sumptuous in places but as a musical it is really questionable. Why do you get Hugh Jackman for one of the main singing parts? Not sure if he just can't sing or if his singing is just totally wrong for the musical style.

& as for memorable tunage, think it lacks it wholesale or is that ust the treatment in the film?
Can't really see a Coltrane equivalent being drawn to fully explore the melodies of this as JC was to songs from The Sound Of Music, Mary Poppins etc

so strange film, I take it if I'm getting to see it 2 months or morea fter it hit Galway it must be somewhat popular. Does make me intrigued about reading the book. Is that deserving the status of classic or just a long soap opera that everybody read so thought of as deeply cultural significant?

Upstream Color is really good
director spoke afterwards and i was shocked that he added walden as the pivotal book long after the script was done

Just watched This Must Be The Place. Strange, sweet film. Couldn't find any discussion on ilx. Makes me want to watch a bunch more Sorrentino. Penn's character feels really unique in the pantheon of screen rockstars, and overall felt elements of Lynch's Straight Story and overtones of... I'm not even sure. The treatment of the holocaust was decidedly european. Not sure of the right traditions to place it in, in that regard.

ah, three prior mentions on this thread. nobody else seemed very keen on it.

I thought it was a bit of a mess tbh. Holocaust angle seemed tacked-on.

The Adventures of Tintin (Spielberg 2011)
Floating Weeds (Ozu 1959)
Holy Motors (Carax 2012)

Beyond The Hills opens this weekend; looking forward to catching it.

how's that tintin movie

on a good run recently - loved all these movies - Amour, The Master, Silver Linings Playbook, Argo and a documentary called Etre et Avoir about a rural French school.

how's that tintin movie

― rust in pieces (darraghmac), Thursday, April 11, 2013 8:12 AM

Amazing to look at, Spielberg obviously had fun conceiving some of the swooping rollercoaster shots (incl. where the camera zooms in on and through an aquarium, stuff like that) but pure drudgery to experience with the sound on, trying to give a damn about the story.

Why do you get Hugh Jackman for one of the main singing parts?

He began in musical theatre, became a star there first

i really liked the Tintin movie, good bit of adventuresome funlols, in the spirit of the books i felt

thought it's hard to adjust to 3 dimensional faces. the noses all look like sausages

Simon Killer is a little too exploitative for me to really recommend but if you're into "HOW SOCIOPATHS ARE MADE" and like your films slick and seedy, slightly self-congratulatory and fronting like they're deeper than they are, go for it. Really solid lead acting job. I have no interest in seeing martha marcy mae etc at this point tho.

hm, i liked it more than that. it does think it's sorta clever/deep but it worked for me, i dont really get exploitative from it. i really like the first movie campos made afterschool

Watched the 70s Great Gatsby last night. Not at all underrated. A corpse of a movie.

yeah I hate that movie a lot

Jc: i got bugged by the whole "let me take you on a journey in the mind of a budding psycho, oh how horrible the privilege, the privilege" and then it has loads of porno ready full body fucking and frontal nudity (but not for our anti hero). , Plus, he ends up being shown as sortof a maybe-not-so-bad position, like this is a life that has some rewards. The slickness and crudity got me tired od it eventually.

idk, i got a lot of tension out of it, like every intimate scene is p charged. i didnt love it but i dont think what it intends to do is bring u into the mind of a psycho, it more wants 2 make u squirm at his cloying neediness, his literal sniveling, but also his relatability imo, the everyday nature of events, etc def subverts a trad "suspense" movie or w/e; he most made me think of stephen glass/'shattered glass' (which is a miles better movie than this but still)

i found this interesting that campos said in an interview

but as far as my writing it came out of a lot of things but primarily out of the writings of Georges Simenon. I’d been interested in the noir world for quite some time, the books of Simenon and Jim Thompson and others, and I was interested in exploring those sorts of worlds in a contemporary way.

yeah that relatability is what i found false; like the lead characters thoughts and approach and desire and were in some way justifiable. I love thompson, but his characters are interesting messes and not at all glamorous and i think there were moments where this guy's actions kind of are filmed as if they were? less full body graphic sex would've been a hint that the filmmaker's sympathies are less with the antihero; it just got tiresome after awhile.
not a bad film exactly but just about at my limit of what i can put up with for that kind of lurid stuff i guess

Jc: i got bugged by the whole "let me take you on a journey in the mind of a budding psycho, oh how horrible the privilege, the privilege" and then it has loads of porno ready full body fucking and frontal nudity (but not for our anti hero). , Plus, he ends up being shown as sortof a maybe-not-so-bad position, like this is a life that has some rewards. The slickness and crudity got me tired od it eventually.

Expert description of the seventies Gatsby film.

haha

THE WARRIORS

it was exactly what i'd hoped

so yeah, since friday night

The Warriors
Hearts of Darkness
The Third Man
His Girl Friday

all first viewings except third man

i saw hyde park on the hudson two nights ago and it was terrible.

Amour (Haneke, 2012) 3.5/5 gruelling but touching too
Argo (Affleck, 2012) 2/5 pretty dumb on the whole
Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010) 4.5/5 this was genius.
A Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997) 3/5 still processing... love the basic conceit but it got painfully slow at points

Beyond The Hills. I've got qualms, most of which involve Mingiu's belting you out of the theatre.

The 49th Parallel. Amazing open air sequences. One sequence of unexpected violence that unfortunately did not result in the death of Leslie Howard.

49th parallel owns

the devil wears prada on tv. think I've watched this like four or five times and it never gets old. best meryl streep.

worst Anne Hathaway though?

Wow, we strongly disagree on beyond the hills. I love that last scene, it is the first moment that i saw the director drive the camera and force a perspective and the instant he does, it is cramped, urban and promptly muddied. Its a sorta indictment on the modern method of presumption of guilt; i was touched by how patient and inclusive he is with all the characters.

wish the nurse were in every scene

I think making the audience suffer is sometimes a good thing, as it was here.

Armond thought it was an anti-religion diatribe.

I'm only imagining how Armond is going to try to tie Oblivion into the media silence on Kermit Gosnell.

Jaws (Spielberg, 1975) - Blu-ray transfer is exceptional 5/5

Blade Runner: Final Cut (Ridley Scott, 1982) - I don't like the Matrix-y slight greenish tint they've added to this version. 5/5

Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958) - Stoker's novel boiled down to its essential core, and then made sexy. The quintessential Hammer; wonderfully colourful with incredibly lavish set and costume design. 4/5

Ghostbusters II (Ivan Reitman, 1989) - I've somehow never seen this until now. Lacks the humour and energy of the first movie, leaving it to Bill Murray to provide the majority of the fun, only he's not firing on all cylinders here. Messy plot, and sloppy editing which keeps draining scenes of their liveliness, but still a fun watch. 2/5

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden, 2012) - Overlong and predictable holiday brochure movie packed with National Treasure thesps. The scene where Dame Judi lectures Indian call centre workers on how to be nicer to their British customers is the absolute worst. 1/5

Side Effects (Soderbergh, 2013) - A film about the risks of antidepressants that morphs into a pulpy twisty thriller is a bit of an odd note to bow out on. Soderbergh is more fascinated with Rooney Mara's face than anything else. 3/5

Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013) - Better than Tron: Legacy, but is similarly great to look at, but really unengaging. Cruise is crap. 2/5

To the Wonder (Malick, 2013) - It has a nice dreamlike sensuality, but it's a drag. Ben Affleck looks lost, and someone needs to have a word with Malick regarding his depiction of women. Where's the director of Badlands? I want him back. 2/5

The Trouble with Money (1936, Ophuls) 7/10
Design for Living (1933, Lubitsch) 8/10
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957, Tashlin) 9/10
Spring Breakers (2012, Korine) 6/10
The Last Detail (1973, Ashby) 8/10
The Five-Year Engagement (2012, Stoller) 6/10
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934, Hitchcock) 8/10
Beyond the Hills(2012, Mungiu) 8/10
Leviathan (2012, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel) 5/10
Bachelor Flat (1962, Tashlin) 7/10
Artists and Models (1955, Tashlin) 6/10
L'Atalante (1934, Vigo) 10/10
AKA Doc Pomus (2012, Miller and Hechter) 6/10

all the old movies are rewatches except for Ophuls and Bachelor Flat

anyone seen Ginger & Rosa?

"the nurse were in every scene" --> that's a misunderstanding of what Mungiu does. She takes the role of the abortionist in 4 months...

I never felt that it was that much of a torture at all. So much is screams and it was about 30 mins of a 2.5 hour movie. Its really more of a gradual thing...

Wasn't the brother incapable of making any decisions? Didn't seem like he could take care of anyone, and as for the hospital its quite clear that care is v erratic, depends on who is on that day.

I'd say it was supposed to be clear he wasn't gonna make any decisions. Ha sthere been anything written about the case this was based on?

The Upsetter: The Life And Music Of Lee Scratch Perry
a great bio of the Jamaican artist and producer including some footag ein and around the Black Ark and from several other points in his history. I'd reccomend this to anyone interested in the guy though it does show him being pretty eccentric in places, which I guess is part of the picture but not sure if certain bits actuallly needed inclusion, the scene in the shop towards the end included.

Room 237
an investigation into some of the possible interpretations of Stanley kubrick's The Shining based on mise en scene etc. & the idea that Kubrick had admittedly placed objects in frame on other pictures to indicate background stories etc. Pretty well made and seems to trigger further investigation. Funny watching this the same week taht I see Robert webb on a BBC 3 Great Movie mistakes talking about how geeky the process of meticulously checking over each frame of a film for mistakes is. Though it does look like the mistakes, incidental details that Kubrick left in were intentional to some degree.

Notes Towards an African Orestes/Notes on India (Pasolini, 1975/1969). Gives an insight on Pasolini, who is in shit-head mode when asking a group of African students, after screening his essay on applying Oresteia to the anti-colonial struggle, what they think of this, or when it should be set 1960 or 1970? (Answer: who cares). I'm harshing on it but there were other good things: free jazz performance (audience reaction as that went on was a memory), and Pasolini's readings of the play.

Notes on India was flat-out great: poverty, the caste system, hardly much movement on that..

A Woman Ascends the Stairs (Naruse, 1960)

Steamboat Bill Jr. (Keaton, 1928) 5/5
A Monster in Paris (Bergeron, 2011) 2.5/5
Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984) 5/5

Portrait of Jason was great and i saw it with the perfect, astonishingly old school ny audience: 10pm show in the west village with a pair of screaming, very drunk queens seated stage right, vociferous lesbians making one row in front of me and dude on the front row getting head from his date for half the film and then them ducking out twice, presumably to fuck in the bathroom.
film itself is just a knockout.

the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds - directed by paul newman; this was v good, darkly comic but highly relatable, great dialogue (play won the pulitzer); joanne woodward is a tragic matriarch her heart is full, it all sorta made me think of grey gardens

An Innocent Man (Peter Yates + Tom Selleck) -- 3/5: Better than that in some ways, but some of the writing is terrible.
Koch -- 4/5
Joe Papp in Five Acts -- 4/5
The Friends of Eddie Coyle -- 4/5
Boogie Nights -- 5/5
Nixon -- 5/5
Bert Stern: Original Madman -- 3.5/5: Thought I'd like this more than I did. Stern is a little tiresome after a while; great photos, of course.
Taxi Driver -- 5/5
Light Sleeper -- 3.5/5: Some good things in there, but what an awful, oppressive score.

Badlands (1973; 3rd viewing) 5/5
Sound City (2012) 3/5
Tabu (2012) 3.5/5
Devi (1960) 4/5
A Well-Spent Life (1971) 4/5
Primer (2004) So damn confusing I have no idea what to rate it.

John Carter (2012, Stanton)
Hellboy (2004, del Toro)
New York, New York (1977, Scorsese)
Dark Shadows (2012, Burton)
Argo (2012, Affleck) that's it?
Broadway Melody, the (1929, Beaumont) very weak
Superman 2 (1980, Donner/Lester) [Donner cut]
Wings (1927, Wellman) had to fast forward through some parts

The End of Summer (Ozu, 1961)
Sisters of the Gion (Mizoguchi, 1936)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1920)

These last few weeks at Copenhagen film festival:

Closed Curtain (Jafar Panahi)
War Witch (Kim Nguyen)
Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas)
Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
After the Battle (Yousry Nasrallah)
The We and the I (Michel Gondry)
Smoking (Alain Resnais)
Pieta (Kim Ki-duk)
Inland Empire - More Things That Happened (David Lynch)
Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Science of Sleep - Version B (Michel Gondry)
Shanghai (Dibakar Banerjee)
Outrage Beyond (Takeshi Kitano)
Gold (Thomas Arslan)
90 Minutes (Eva Sørhaug)
The Land of Hope (Sion Sono)
In Another Country (Hong San-soo)
Night (Leonardo Brzezicki)
Harmony Lessons (Emir Baigazin)
No (Pablo Larrain)
The Plague (Neus Ballus)
Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl)
Paradise: Faith (Seidl)
Paradise: Hope (Yup, Seidl)
Night Across the Street (Raul Ruiz)
La Belle Noiseuse - Divertimento (Jaques Rivette)
Penance (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Benur (Massimo Andrei)
The Color Wheel (Alex Ross Perry)
Gebo and the Shadow (Manoel de Oliveira)
The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)

Some of them were very good.

haha, that does sound ideal, forks.

Some folks find Jason probematic in terms of black/queer rpresentation by white filmmakers. I haven't seen it yet.