Last (x) movies you saw

Seduced and Abandoned (on Hulu/Criterion) is A+ indictment of sicilian patriarchy, just a great film

Miranda July was really proud of those damned cat v/o's, but slice them out and The Future would've been tolerable (if a lot more generic).

latest batch:

the battle of algiers
melancholia
valhalla rising
rio bravo
casablanca
jesus of montreal
a canterbury tale

I had vaguely meant to see The Future, but that was before I discovered (just now) that they had cat voice overs.

Spring Breakers. Well, THAT scene, you know which one I'm talking about, with the... song... was absolutely freaking brilliant. The rest was ok.

Only God Forgives. I've been a bit proud that there has been three Danish directors with films in Cannes these last few years, but after seeing this I remembered that two of those are bat-shit crazy misogynists, and the third is Thomas Vinterberg... Still, I like the career Winding Refn has build up, few people have had as many ups and downs, and pretty much all of his downs are because he's made a stylish but mindless sadistic film like this. At some point you would have thought he would have learnt his lesson, but no... Still, it's very well made, beautiful to look at, and with iconic characters, but you've seen almost all of it before...

The cat voice-overs are not the sort of twee whimsy you might think though. They are the saddest thing in the movie.

xp

Sad that they're in the movie.

p sure i have indignant & blustering defences of the future elsewhere on ilx so won't repeat, but yeah the dismissal of that stuff/this film in general as twee is really lazy, i think - it's a really thoughtful, personal film about anxiety & creativity but receives a lot of the same reflexive rejection as something like girls, with assumptions that it's just some kind of miranda july video diary capturing entitled whites. such an interesting film, it really gets at some of the boundaries that people draw around their activities in a way that nothing else i can think of does.

a funny thing about The Future is that Miranda July let the Old Christine guy play the "Miranda July part".

trailer for the future was insufferable, were any of those bits in the film

I liked The Future and the cat parts were heartbreaking

I actually went out and strangled a cat on the way home from seeing that movie.

nooooooo

we can't talk anymore xp

i pretty much avoid all movies where bad things might potentially happen to cats

but it's a cat voiced by Miranda July

i pretty much avoid all movies where bad things might potentially happen to cats

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 5 June 2013 06:34 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

never ever watch Satantango!

Or Maurice Pialat's L'enfance nue.

Or Boondock Saints

or Gummo

Or an american tail

or disney's cinderella

that scene in satantango...

i will second the request to never watch gummo

Or Dogtooth

Is there a doesthecatdie.com?

No?

Only a doesthedogdie.com?

Nobody cares about cats.

or ppl who aren't American, in Argo

i've seen dogtooth but fortunately got warned ahead of time so i knew when to avert my eyes.

tbh i am completely fine with never seeing satantango, boondock saints, or gummo.

what about 1900?

you should totally see gummo. bicycle scene = the tree of life that actually works.

All rewatches except for the first and then the last two on the list.

The Organizer (Monicelli, 1963) 7/10
Husbands and Wives (Allen, 1992) 8/10
The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) 10/10
Reality Bites (Stiller, 1994) 6/10
A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan, 1951) 9/10
The Wizard of Oz (Fleming etc, 1939) 9/10
Battle Royale (Fukasaku, 2000) 3/10
Mysteries of Lisbon (Ruiz, 2010) 5/10

Madame Bovary (Chabrol, 1991) - Don't really care for Chabrol and haven't paid any attn to Flaubert, just any ol' excuse to watch Isabelle Huppert walking around in triffic gowns for a couple of diverting hours on a breezy Sun afternoon.

^^^^ first Chabrol I ever saw (in the theatre!)

Before Midnight
8 1/2 (third viewing)
Nat'l Lampoon's European Vacation (christ this was junk -- the worst of the original trilogy?)

Yes, I saw it at a nice screening today. Really liked the scene @ the ball, and I suppose given the lack of human feel to any Chabrol the literary material suits. Not sure what Flaubert fans think of it?

mysteries of lisbon is excellent. so sensual.

i can't remember what i've seen but I loved the secret of the grain. so rich. even its portrait of small-town racism is somehow warm.

The Snowtown Murders - been wanting to see this for a while. As disturbing as expected, if not more so. I imagine it might be a touch confusing for those unfamiliar with the story, since the director doesn't really underline many of the relationships or who many of the victims are. Lead actor was impressive, played the charmer/predator role incredibly well, eerily so. And the look was spot on- bleak rural-suburban. I read that the director cast using mostly locals aside from the main leads, which def added an eerie reality to it. Graphic as hell though...v hard to watch in places.

xpost

Yeah I was with it for the first half but then it just became one more flashback within a flashback within a flashback too many. Absolutely gorgeous to look at, though.

8 1/2 4.5/5 Snap Alfred! This was my second attempt. Loved it.
The Virgin Suicides 3.5/5
The Life and Death Colonel Blimp 5/5 perfect film.

This morning I cashed in some gift cards I got for donating blood on DVDs - included Blimp (+ Repo Man, Certified Copy, Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic).

Just watched The Hunt "Jagten", Danish drama with Mads Mikkelsen (casino royale bad guy).
Well worth a watch.

Marriage Italian Style - Mastroianni and Loren (esp.) are great in this.

reality (matteo garrone '12) 2/5
traveller (jack n. green '97) 3/5
white hunter, black heart (eastwood '90) 2.5/5
the sadist (james landis '63) 3.5/5
those lips, those eyes (michael pressman '80) 3/5
rosetta (dardennes '99) 3.5/5

Zaza (1923, Dwan) 7/10
Me Too (2012, Balabanov) 7/10
Days of Youth (1929, Ozu) 6/10
Man to Man (1930, Dwan) 6/10
We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (2013, Gibney) 7/10
Killing Them Softly (2012, Dominik) 6/10
Trouble in Paradise (1932, Lubitsch) 10/10
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles) 10/10
Student (2012, Omirbayev) 6/10
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974, Kotcheff) 8/10

Behind the Candelabra (2013) 3.5/5
Mother and Son (1997) 3.5/5
Raw Deal (1948) 3.5/5
Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980) 3.5/5
Upstream Color (2013) 3.5/5
Yoyo (1965) 3/5

seen some awesome films lately:

ink - movie somewhat set in dream state/alternate reality but as this is explicit from the beginning it's not lame. plus surrealism, kung fu, feels, 10/10
wreck-it ralph - as if a disney cash cow was scripted by pixar writing team, 8/10
movie 43 - random and silly but hillarious, 8/10
my uncle boonmee who can recal past lives - thai art film, started off interesting but i lost the thread a ways in, not sure that's entirely my fault, 6/10
triplets of belleville - a bit slow but interesting, awesome chase scene at end, 7/10
dazed and confused - still incredibly watchable on 17th viewing, 10/10

did you like the catfish scene in boonmee? hot stuff. 17th viewing of D&C? wow! I wonder if i've seen any movie that much.

Tabu (Murnau) 4/5
Queen Kelly (Stroheim) 4/5
Mouchette (Bresson) 4/5
L'argent (Bresson) 4.5/5

cajun, i applaud your filmic explorations. you're watching some good stuff.

I've been watching Mark Cousins' The Story of Film series lately, haven't made time for actual films. But I did watch They Were Expendable (Ford, '45) when it was on TCM a couple of weeks ago.

haven't done one of these for a while

The Phantom of Liberty 3/5 - lolled @ michel lonsdale in bottomless chaps
Beyond the Hills 4/5 - a shade below 4 3 2 - the long-tracking-shot-directly-behind-the-head-of-the-protaganist-style is already hardening into stylistic cliche - but i was still absolutely gripped, and thought the antireligiosity was much more nuanced than i was possibly expecting
The Kentucky Fried Movie 3/5 - watched this old teenage fave at my place, v. mashed, w/ a friend who had never seen it before, and who laughed VERY heartily at certain points - and that was more pleasing to me as host than parts of this film, which really fell flat all these years later(the 'hands-on cinema' sketch esp overstays its welcome)
Spring Breakers 3/5
Tabu (2012) 3/5 - MUCH preferred the first half of this split film - was rather wearied by the archness of the second part
This is not a Film 3/5
Evil Dead (2013) 1/5 - a fucking disgrace
Great Expectations (1946) 4/5 - film does lose some of its oomph once john mills enters - plus a sickly horrible performance by alec guinness! - but up till then the pictorial filmmaking is of a very high quality (the atmospheric scenes in graveyards and marshes are enough to make me regret that lean never directed a purely supernatural movie)
Rosetta 3.5/5 - i agree w/ j.crunch!
Iron Man3 2.5
The Campaign 2/5
The Girl 2/5 - saw this as an inflight movie so obv not ideal viewing conditions - but thought it was bloody awful, just as much of a travesty of hitchcock and cinema as the one w/ Hopkins (which at least moved at a zippier pace and didn't take itself so seriously)
Beasts of the Southern Wild 2/5
In the Fog 3/5 - i'd been working, i was very tired, i fell asleep for a while, what can i say
The Place Beyond the Pines - 2.5/5 - another movie i've seen recently where the first half is the best - only in this case the third act is p close to a total disaster
Theorem 4/5
Star Trek: Into Darkness 3/5 - an above average dopey star trek movie - loved all the future london cgi
Something in the Air 4/5
Marnie 4/5 - hadn't realised before just how much of a foundational giallo text this is - sean connery is fucking horrible throughout
Le Amiche 4/5 - love the BBFC 'warning' on the back of this beautifully presented Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray - "contains suicide references and scenes of smoking" - antonioni's entire career in a nutshell
Hors Satan 5/5 - this wonderfully mysterious film has haunted me since i've seen it - makes me want to drop to my knees like the lead character and worship before dumont
We jam econo 3/5 - a friend said to me abt this, "richard meltzer (oh dear) and richard hell (oh dear oh dear)"
Behind the Candelabra 3.5/5
Scarecrow 3.5/5 - funniest moment: when gene hackman shouts FUCK OFF suddenly at the old guy pawing at his sleeve in the diner - pure essence of 70s cinema - so lots of indulged method acting manchildren and marginalised female characters - but also glorious images, some kind of engagement w/ social inequality, moments of human reality - the final scene, with hackman hammering the heel of his shoe on the counter, is a perfect ending

yea i did like 'rosetta' but it felt a touch more contrived than la promesse or kid w/ the bike imo