Last (x) movies you saw

Killer Joe (2012, Friedman)

Friedkin

thx

black swan (aronofsky)
the second circle (sokurov)
zebraman; zebraman 2 (miike)

The Cat o' Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971) - watching American actors dubbed into Italian with English subtitles is disconcerting. (4/5)
In The Fog (Sergei Loznitsa, 2012) - pretty good; good acting, slow burning atmosphere etc but any film about the Nazi occupation of Belarus really has to be compared to Come And See, in the same way that any film about the water supply in California would have to be compared to you-know-what. And it's nowhere near, unfortunately. (3/5)

He Who Gets Slapped
Gangs Of Wasseypur 2
The Grandmasters
Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die
The Place Beyond The Pines

A couple potentially controversial scores here:

Carnage 6/10
Ikiru 8/10
A Hard Day's Night 5/10
Lady and the Tramp 8/10
M. Hulot's Holiday 5/10
Plan 9 From Outer Space 6/10
Sea of Love 7/10

But it's Pacino that is the biggest let down - so contained and intense in the first two, here he sleepwalks through, bleary-eyed with a Bart Simpson haircut. It's as if he had completely forgotten how to play the character.

― DavidM, Monday, May 13, 2013 11:23 AM (6 days ago)

Exactly. It wouldn't be correct to say it's literally not the same actor, but in so many ways it's not.

how's The Grandmasters Jay Vee? Why didnt you like Hard Day's Night cryptosicko (i havent seen it myself)

Passion of Joan of Arc 5/5
City Girl 4.5/5
Greed 5/5
L'avventura 3.5/5
Dead Man 2/5
The Fireman's Ball 4/5
The Flight of the Red Balloon 4/5

The Grandmasters is the most languid and romantic Kung Fu flick I have seen.

cp I wasn't that fussed about Hulot's Holiday tbh. Maybe I haven't seen enough Great Silent Films Stars but it all seemed a bit broad for me

xp obv

I'm just going to copy/paste a review of AHDN that I posted to another forum in answer to cajunsunday's question:

Locating a dissenting opinion on "A Hard Day's Night" is proving nearly as difficult as locating one on the Beatles themselves. I certainly don't dislike the Beatles, but I don't much like "A Hard Day's Night," which I was initially surprised to learn was only the *fourth* entry in Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" series, meaning that he he felt the need to cover it before tackling any other film aside from "Casablanca," "Ikiru" and "Vertigo." But the film really does seem to have a solidly regarded place within film history. Even at the time, it seems, few were able to dismiss the film as being merely a cash grab for the then-rising band; hell, the film even received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay! And, of course, the film has been said to have had a great influence on what would, a couple of decades later, become the music video format, what with the Beatles goofing around in sped-up motion while one of their songs plays on the soundtrack, although I must say that I was surprised at just how few and far between these sequences were.

Implicit in the praise that the film has received over the years is the claim that you do not need to love the Beatles to enjoy the film, but truthfully, there isn't really anything here that I can imagine appealing to anyone who isn't already a devoted fan. The individual Beatles never really do or say anything all that interesting or funny (despite their dialogue consisting mainly of one-liners) during the film, which mostly jumps from one thinly-sketched scenario to another, mostly killing time in between musical numbers (all pre-recorded album versions, by the way; "The Ed Sullivan Show" aside, were the Beatles ever really all that renowned for their live performances?). It all feels a bit sanitary as well: their goofing off is mostly just that, and there is no real sense of authority being challenged here at all. The establishment of the Beatles of this film as particularly cuddly rebels is highlighted by the contrast of their antics with those of Paul's slightly daffy grandfather, inexplicably accompanying them on their tour. While they run around playgrounds and hit on girls, Grandpa McCartney is sneaking off to casinos and staging practical jokes. The point doesn't seem to be the positioning of the boomer generation (represented here by the Beatles and their screaming fans) as uniquely rebellious as much as it is the skewering of the Greatest Generation (here the managers, the TV producers and one old stick-in-the-mud who, early in the film, chides one of the guys with the typical "I fought in the war for your freedom" line) as stodgy and joyless. What both the Beatles' generation and Grandpa McCartney's have in common is that they are both locked under the stern, authoritarian thumb of the generation that sits between them.

There were two sequences that I quite liked: the first has George being harassed by some advertising people trying to get him to shill for their products. When he blithely dismisses both the product and their teenage spokesmodel, the advertisers are genuinely shocked by their sudden inability to control the youth market, illustrating just how much of a game-changer the Beatles were in their effect on youth culture. The second is a strangely melancholic sequence in which Ringo takes off an hour before showtime to walk around town taking photos. He meets a young boy who is delinquent from school, finally introducing himself with "I'm a deserter, too." There's a real weight to the scene that just isn't there in the rest of the film in this idea that rebellion isn't worth very much if it lacks any sense of play.

As for Hulot, yeah, I just didn't laugh that much, sorry. Tati's approach to comedy (at least on the basis of this film) feels too gentle to work as satire and too laid back to work as slapstick. The movie is tres pretty to look at though, I'll give it that, and I actually did laugh quite a bit at the sequence where Tati accidentally joins a funeral procession. I'm still curious to check out Playtime, though. A friend described it to me as " the most passive voyeuristic movie you could think of," so I'm intrigued.

I'm a fan of AHDN, but if you're looking only for laughs I'd say Peter Sellers' cover of the song as done by Olivier's Richard III is superior.

Tati's otherworldly not-like-anyone-else quality/pacing is part of his appeal to me. MHH is def no more than his third-best, tho.

Devil In A Blue Dress (5/5)
I Stand Alone (Seul Contra Nous) (5/5)
The Place Beyond The Pines (2.5/5)
Upstream Color (3.5/5)
The Arbor (5/5)

cryptosicko, please don't skip "playtime"!

I laughed a lot at Playtime and I'm not even an old grouch like Dr. Morbius!

love 'm. hulot's holiday' a lot, but it prob helps if (like me) you're a clouseau-esque klutz who kind of identifies with tati's character.

i think AHDN's charms may be lost a bit if you watch it expecting it to be some great masterpiece; i like the kind of offhand goofiness of it, and there's so many weird, off-key lines and moments that just kind of shoot by faster than you can take them in, like george 'shaving' someone else in the mirror. (john singing the first line of 'if i fell' to ringo always cracks me up.) and i agree about the ringo-on-the-beach sequence -- very poignant and very much in line with the tone of 'a taste of honey' and a lot of the other great kitchen-sink films of the day.

Ms. 45 was a good time, totally dorky and heavy handed as hell with earned artistic pretentions.
Francis Ha is among the worst films I've ever seen.

If you have a visceral loathing of rich folk, avoid Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's (or have fun exercising your contempt). I liked it. I've seen a few fashion documentaries now--Anna Wintour, Valentino, Halston, Isaac Mizrahi--and it's a world that interests me but makes zero sense. I want to understand!

The Wise Kids (4/5)
Deja Vu (3/5)
The Seven-Ups (3/5--generous)
Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's (3.5/5)
Spring Breakers (2.5/5)
Side Effects (3.5/5)
The Case of the Grinning Cat (3/5)
A Grin Without a Cat (4/5)
The Shining (4/5)
Room 237 (4/5, to sidestep a torrent of abuse)

querelle
world on a wire
piano tuner of earthquakes
a life less ordinary

Iron Man 2 (Favreau, 2010) 2.5/5
Intouchables (Nakache/Toledano, 2010) 4/5
Star Trek: Into Darkness (Abrams, 2013) 2.5/5

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) 3/5
The 39 Steps (1935) 4/5
Repo Man (1984; repeat viewing) 3.5/5
Tiny Furniture (2010) 2.5/5
Rapture (1965) 4.5/5

Brave (2012, various)
Ben-Hur (1959, Wyler)
Platoon (1986, Stone)
Despicable Me (2010, Coffin and Renaud)
Searching for Sugar Man (2012, Bendjelloul) 1/5
Chicken Little (2005, Dindal)
No Man's Land (2001, Tanovic)

Iron Man 3 (Black, 2013)
Three Colors: Red (Kieslowski, 1994)
(the surviving 10 minutes of) I Graduated, But... (Ozu, 1929)
Shorts by David Lynch:
- "Six Figures Getting Sick (Six Times)" (1966)
- "The Alphabet" (1968)
- "The Amputee" (1974), both versions
- "Premonitions Following an Evil Deed" (1996)

XXXXXP - Clemenza, have you sen the documentary about Bill Cunningham? It's really enjoyable.

I saw that and liked it, yes--put it on a Top 10 I posted here that year.

fucking hell, 'shadows of forgotten ancestors' is SO GOOD
also 'paranorman' far better than i could have expected

yeah that's a great movie. her fall, the camera in the forest, swoon.

I can see not loving Sugarman but 1/5 is pretty harsh

shadows of forgotten ancesctors is fire

ugh, ancestors

i saw shadows as part of this: http://atrium.lincolncenter.org/index.php/atrium-2013-a-hawk-and-a-hacksaw
need to resee it shortly without the backing; curious if hawk+hacksaw added or detracted and can't tell without a rewatch

oh yeah i saw them bumbling over it too. i thought they were fine but i'd rather have seen it w/something approximating whatever it was originally presented with. barely remember but seem to recall thinking that they were occasionally going elegiac when it should have been sorta rowdier, more brutal.

i remember thinking several times that they'd just shut up and let me watch the film... but i LIKE them! The film is just too good.

Something in the Air (Assayas, 2012) - If he hadn't made Carlos this would be pure hokum. Works in that line, with a great last scene.
Cloud Atlas (Tykwer, A & L Wachowski, 2012) - now this is a nostalgia trip of all the SF/apocalypitc films you've seen. Adds nothing to it, with loads of parallelization, for not v much of a point.

anyone seen Ginger & Rosa?

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, April 20, 2013 8:15 AM

Me, tonight. Bare-bones story, veers into melodrama, but I think it'll stay with me. Brooding (and kind of annoying) writer leaves Christina Hendricks for gorgeous 19-year-old--only in the movies. Excellent but too-brief use of Kind of Blue, plus some other famous jazz music.

Actually, "leaves + takes up with" would be more accurate.

The Great Gatsby (Luhrmann, 2013) - Enjoyed the camera swooping impossibly around the Busby Berkley champagne-popping party scenes, and most of the performances. It's technically pretty faithful to the book except it completely lacks its bruised heart and yearning ache. 7/10
Iron Man 3 (Black, 2013) - The use of Ben Kingsley's character was perhaps the film's one decent idea. 3/10
Skyfall (Mendes, 2012) - Perhaps not the worst Bond film, but without doubt the most boring. 4/10
Antiviral (Cronenberg Jr, 2012) - Wash away the body-horror blood-vomit and it's just another plodding, heavy-handed satire on celeb culture. Not without inventive ickiness, but such a slog. 5/10
The Hunger Games (Ross, 2012) - It's gauche and looks cheap, but it stands up as a decent anti-authoritarian yearn for tweens. JLaw is the film's real strength, though. 6/10
Silver Linings Playbook (Russell, 2012) - There's something pre-e-etty dodgy about using debilitating mental illnesses as eccentric character quirks. That aside; great cast, but the corny, slushy sitcom writing pulled it further and further down. 4/10
Evil Dead (Alvarez, 2013) - Swapping Raimi's anarchic spiritedness for straightforward, grittily sadistic splatter. In that sense it works, but the serious approach to dumb-teens-in-woods horror - esp after Cabin in the Woods - is... hard to take seriously. 5/10

Knightriders (Romero, 1981) - Arthurian legend told as a modern day motorcycle jousting drama. Ed Harris takes it all very very seriously, which is great. Nice to see this cult classic get a Blu-ray release. 7/10
The Party's Over (Guy Hamilton, 1965) - '65 feels a bit late to have had a cautionary tale about irresponsible, hedonistic beatniks. Oliver Reed plays his usual brooding bullish bully. 5/10
Paranoiac (Freddie Francis, 1963) - Hammer stepping away from the vividly colourful Victorian horrors to make this weird Hitchcockian psycho-drama about a man who turns up at the house of an emotionally unstable family claiming to be the son/brother who they believed had died. Is he? Wonderful B&W photography, with a tense and decidedly off-kilter vibe. Oliver Reed, again, is terrifically menacing. 8/10

Love yr capsule reviews, DavidM. Please keep them coming.

La Cinquieme Saison - pretty damn bleak (plot: little French village gradually falls apart when winter never leaves). Looks beautiful, though the humor disappears halfway through and the misery gets a little overpowering. Reminded me a bit of Heart of Glass, especially the running gag of a stone-faced man staring down a rooster that refuses to crow.

Notorious (Hitchcock) 4.5/5
The Dark Knight Rises 2/5 (rewatch) much worse than I remembered
Blue Valentine 3.5/5
Gerry (Van Sant) 3.5/5
The Third Man 4.5/5 (rewatch)
Lola Montes 4.5/5

Argo (Affleck, 2012) - came to this without knowing much about the events, and expected something worthier and more inert. Pleasantly surprised by the capersome vibe, pretty decent Saturday night fayre. 3/5
Dredd (Travis, 2012) - my youthful enthusiasm for 2000AD was stoked for this and it didn't disappoint. Clearly of a feather with The Raid, but v solid fun and I loved Urban's take on JD. The exquisite photography from Anthony Dod Mantle took me by surprise, the early sequence with Headey zoning out on SLO-MO in the bath was spellbinding. 4/5
The Hunt (Vinterberg, 2012) - never saw Submarino so I didn't expect such a stylistic tone down from Vinterberg's earlier films. Mikkelsen superb throughout. The way events unfurled managed to mostly avoid cliches, found the whole thing powerful and believable. 4/5
Lady & the Tramp (Geronimi, Jackson, Luske, 1955) - as sweet as ever, and it looks stunning on blu-ray; the detail and artistry in the background drawings is really able to shine. 3.5/5
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (Lord, Newitt, 2012) - actual lols in nearly every scene, gloriously animated too. Masses of freeze-frame gags. The Pirate King's arrival on stage by bellowing a request for "any lubbers in the house?" inflating a hot water bottle to bursting and then punching out a lackey dressed as Queen Victoria confirmed for me that this is how children's films should be. Loved it. 4/5

The slo-mo effects in Dredd were actually pretty dang cool.

that final slo-mo scene & buildup was worth it.

Something in the Air (Assayas, 2012) - If he hadn't made Carlos this would be pure hokum. Works in that line, with a great last scene.

saw this tonight, really enjoyed it. Long & meandering & pretty & fun & namedroppy. There's kevin ayers! There's john ashberry! &c

some v cuet actors in it too

I'll see Something in the Air within a week or two--I hope it's better than the Bertolucci's The Dreamers.

Get rid of that stray "the."

Disorder (2009, Huang) 9/10
Vamps (2012, Heckerling) 8/10
Stories We Tell (2012, Polley) 7/10
Augustine (2012, Winocour) 6/10
Broken Arrow (1950, Daves) 7/10
*Badlands (1973, Malick) 8/10
*The Girl Can't Help It (1956, Tashlin) 6/10
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012, Nance) 8/10
*Sabotage (1936, Hitchcock) 8/10
The Red House (1947, Daves) 7/10
Pride of the Marines (1945, Daves) 7/10
Who's Minding the Store? (1963, Tashlin) 7/10
The Last Wagon (1956, Daves) 7/10
Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (1990, Wu) 8/10
*Voyage to Italy (1954, Rossellini) 10/10
Under the Sun of Satan (1987, Pialat) 5/10

*rewatches