Last (x) movies you saw

Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)
L'Histoire d'Adele H. (Truffaut, 1974) - Adjani effortlessly carrying this flat-toned movie through. There is something here about writing and madness that wasn't made as much out of as I thought it would be.

That's still the only late Truffaut I love. Adjani gives the best perf in a Truffaut movie since Leaud, and if it feels claustrophobic credit the choice of framing.

Almost all of this movie was about her face. And can you blame him etc.?

Bet Two English Girls is a laugh.

IN:
Meet me in St Louis (Minnelli, 1944) 8/10
Kings of the Road (Wenders, 1976) 8/10
The Great Beauty (Sorrentino, 2013) 7/10
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy, 1964) 8/10
The Exterminating Angel (Bunuel, 1962) 8/10
Marketa Lazarova (Vlacil, 1967) 8/10
La Strada (Fellini, 1954) 8/10
Duck Soup (McCarey, 1933) 4/10
http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-really-wants-to-like-the-marx-brothers,1482/
The Piano (Campion, 1993) 6/10
Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch, 1932) 8/10
Daisies (Chytilova, 1966) 7/10

OUT:
Her (Jonze, 2013) 4/10
Touch of Sin (Jia, 2013) 7/10
Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch, 2013) 7/10
Norte, the End of History (Diaz, 2013) 9/10

wow, must see Norte, the End of History

Yeah, I really want to see that one as well!

revisited a few favs on the big screen this last month or two:

rebecca (hitch, 1940) 10/10
rear window (hitch, 1954) 9/10
the punk singer (sini anderson, 2013) 8/10
indiana jones/temple of doom (spielberg, 1984) 7/10
daisies (vera chytilova, 1966) 10/10

*Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993) 4/5
The Mighty (Chelsom, 1998) 2/5
Scarlet Street (Lang, 1945) 3.5/5
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (Branagh, 2014) 3/5
Lady for a Day (Capra, 1933) 4/5
*Cat's Eye (Teague, 1985) 4/5
Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2013) 2.5/5

(*rewatches, of course)

Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock, 1943) - How have I managed to miss this all my life? Excellent. A big influence on Lynch by the looks of it (the occasional dreamlike flashbacks to ballroom dancers even reminded me of the very first shot of Mulholland Dr.). 9/10
Nebraska (Payne, 2013) - 4/10
Fantastic Voyage (Fleisher, 1996) - 7/10 *
My Neighbour Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988) - 9/10 *
Punch Drunk Love (Anderson, 2002) - 4/10 *
Prince Avalanche (Paul Gordon Green, 2013) - 7/10
Metropolis (Lang, 1927) - 8/10 *
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy, 1964) - 8/10
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978) - 8/10 *
Filth (Jon S. Baird, 2013) - 1/10
Inside Llewyn Davis (Coens, 2013) - 6/10
The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973) - 6/10
The Treasure of Sierra Madre (Huston, 1948) - 9/10
(* = rewatch)

(David Gordon Green)

I'm sick as hell and have a week off from school so I've started binge-watching. So far: Total Recall (an old favorite), In Bruges (surprisingly not shit), and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (first time seeing it in full since I was five; aside from Bob Hoskins' terrifying back hair it holds up)

Ward Fowler, smdh at you

Ward Fowler, buying you a drink.

go watch some "camp"!

*Betrayal (1983, Jones/Pinter) 7/10
*Je t’aime, je t’aime (1968, Resnais) 8/10
Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2013, Desplechin) 6/10
*To Catch a Thief (1955, Hitchcock) 8/10
Caesar Must Die (2012, Taviani, Taviani) 7/10
The Carey Treatment (1972, Edwards) 5/10
*The Hospital (1971, Hiller/Chayefsky) 6/10
*The Last Time I Saw Macao (2012, Rodrigues, Guerra da Mata) 9/10
The Butler (2013, Daniels) 4/10
Oh… Rosalinda!! (1955, Powell & Pressburger) 5/10
The Great Beauty (2013, Sorrentino) 4/10
Waltes from Vienna (1934, Hitchcock) 5/10

To Catch a Thief is not "minor" Hitchcock, it's a splendid sex comedy with depth anyone else would have to huff n' puff for.

Never heard of that Powell & Pressburger. Ever seen Gone to Earth? Looks like the twee-est bullshit ever but I'm still kind of curious, I think my local place only has it in PAL though.

tbh that onion/marx bros story has always kind of pissed me off

yes, I like Gone to Earth, it's a weird one. Jennifer Jones is underappreciated in general.

i love the marx brothers but i snorted at that onion article

Watched Broken Circle Breakdown last night, not knowing anything about the plot, thinking it was a neat Belgium movies about bluegrass. Left me utterly devastated. I kept thinking things are going to get better for these people....

the uninvited (1944) - 9/10 - unexpectedly moving moment when Milland played Stella by Starlight to Gail Russell, exacerbated by Russell's career backstory. it's like a mournful standard for her.
the furies - 8/10 - pretty amazing though it ends a bit sentimental considered the events that precede it.
Star Trek into darkness - 5/10 - looks good but this is basically a crap reboot series we're seeing in action here. Abrams sucks.
The lady vanishes - 9/10 - loved it. wish I hadn't seen "flightplan" first.

Dirty Wars (2013) 3.5/5
The Act of Killing (2012) 4.5/5
Dallas Buyers Club (2013) 2.5/5
The Heat (2013) 2/5
Kuroneko (1968) 3.5/5
Berberian Sound Studio (2012) 2.5/5
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009; 2nd viewing) 4/5
Cutie and the Boxer (2013) 4/5
Post Tenebras Lux (2012) 3/5

The World's End: 2.5/5
Tim's Vermeer 3/5

The Lady from Shanghai (8.5/10)
The Fury (7/10)
Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (6.5/10)
Shock Corridor (7/10)
Runaway Jury (5.5/10)
(500) Days of Summer (6/10)
Carrie (10/10)
Harry and Tonto (7.5/10)
Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman (7.5/10)
Mock-Ups in Close-Up: Architectural Models in Film (6.5/10)

particle fever is surprisingly good; very compulsive and engaging narrative on a topic that's hard to even begin to understand

Going to see that on Sunday.

*Nashville (Altman, 1975)
Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson, 2012)
The Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara, 1964)
The Tale of Zatoichi (Misumi, 1962)
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (Kramer, 1967)
Gate of Hell (Kinugasa, 1953)
Changing (documentary short; Hubert Smith, 1971)
Across the Pacific (Huston, 1942) - Once too often to the well for Bogart, Astor, Greenstreet, Huston and the other Falcon people involved in this
21 Days (Dean, 1940)
The Age of Innocence (Scorsese, 1993)
*Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Hill, 1969)

Act of Killing (Oppenheimer, 2012)
Wall-E (Stanton, 2008)*
The Lego Movie (Miller & Lord, 2014)
(nostalgia) (Frampton, 1971)
India Song (Duras, 1975)
The Return (Zvyagintsev, 2003)
The Face of Another (Teshigahara, 1966)
What Time is it There? (Tsai, 2001)

Easy Virtue (1928, Hitchcock) 5/10
We Are the Best! (2013, Moodysson) 7/10
Christmas in Connecticut (1945, Godfrey) 6/10
*Under Capricorn (1949, Hitchcock) 8/10
The Island of St. Matthews (2013, Everson) 6/10
Regeneration (1915, Walsh) 8/10
*Repo Man (1984, Cox) 6/10
Child's Pose (2013, Netzer) 7/10
*Gentleman Jim (1942, Walsh) 8/10
The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955, Fleischer) 6/10
*20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1954, Fleischer) 7/10
Himizu (2011, Sono) 8/10
*New York, New York (1977, Scorsese) 8/10
Profound Desire of the Gods (1968) 8/10

arrrgh, that last one is Imamura

Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch, 2013) - looking at Tilda's filmography - she's in so many of these type of 'quirky' films (in the midst of blankly serious garbage like I am Love), its all such a waste. Funny but man oh man is the vampire = music totally played out or what? I shouldn't go to these films. But we all get bored sometimes.

Coup de Torchon (Tavernier, 1981) - More like it. I wanted to check my copy of Pop.1280 to read whether the story of how dogs started sniffing each other arseholes was in it.

Rome, Open City (Rossellini, 1945) - the ruins of a devastated Rome look beautiful, all crisp on the big screen. Magnani is titanic and I'm almost ashamed to go to the cinema again after watching this but I get bored sometimes.

started trying to watch the Ruling Class the 60s satire starring Peter O'Toole and it slipped out of sync with the sound after about 20 minutes. Shame have wanted to see that since my brother described it to me about 35 years ago.
Think I had a chance to watch it on tv about 10 years ago and fell asleep.

THen I d/lded it when I first had torrents at home and I think it must have been the same version I just tried to watch on Friday. ONly remembered that when I saw this slip out of sync, wondered why I hadn't watched it otherwise.

War Horse (Spielberg, 2011) 3/10
The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1938) 8/10
Limitless (Burger, 2011) 6/10
Lego Movie (Lord, 2014) 7/10
Carnage (Polanski, 2011) 7/10

war horse more like bore horse

I quit halfway through, I couldn't take it

I bet even the horse had that sack of shit expunged from it's imdb entry.

Just watched Snowpiercer 5/10

Very disappointing coming from the director of The Host and Memories of Murder, love Tilda Swinton's performance and accent tho.

I watched it with people so i had to watch it all the way through. I made sure my yawns were audible tho.

xxpost

I've started a Letterboxd account to help me track my film viewing (and encourage me to do more; it had really fallen off for a few years):
http://www.letterboxd.com/ryanhupp/films/diary/

Nothing too exciting there, and I wish it would let me add unique notes for each time a film appears in the diary- stuff like where I saw it, or if I watched it with commentary, or whatever, but that's a minor quibble.

I've started on a Takashi Miike project; I'm not viewing everything, or everything in order, since that would be insane and I don't have access to anywhere near enough, but I'm trying to concentrate on roughly 1996-2001 for now. I've seen a few before, but the only one I've watched as part of the current binge prior to starting the Letterboxd account was the first Dead Or Alive last week. I'll be moving on to the MPD Psycho miniseries and Black Society trilogy next week.

bird people is a good time.

on tap for this week: Ernest and Celestine, Jodorowsky's Dune, Errol Morris' The Unknown Known

yeah cajunsunday, Limitless is 2x as good as War Horse. Use yr eyes in the future.

^^^ with Morbs on this

Lost Weekend - Not the biggest Wilder fan here but this was terrific - bar some of the terrible dialogue. This one and "Double Indemnity" are now my go-to Wilders.
Sex Shop - Silly yet fascinating Claude Berri examination of the Sexual Revolution. Dubbed in English, Gainsbourg score and Juliet Berto as a blond! + Nathalie Delon as a swinger wife.
Avé

The Seven-Ups (D'Antoni, 1973) - Came for the car chase, stayed for the incredibly stupid everything else. One of the worst films I've seen in the last few years.
Before Midnight (Linklater, 2013)
Early Summer (Ozu, 1951)
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Peckinpah, 1973)
40 Naughty Girls (Cline, 1937)
Mud (Nichols, 2012)
Rome, Open City (Rossellini, 1945)
I Married a Witch (Clair, 1942)
Premium Rush (Koepp, 2012)
Without Pity (Latuada, 1948)

What'd you think of Pat Garrett? I just watched it for the first time and while it wasn't the unjustly derided masterpiece I was hoping for, I still liked it quite a bit.

I wanted to like it, approached it with all the good will in the world. I'd seen it 30-ish years ago for the Dylan stunt casting but didn't remember anything so didn't call the other night a rescreen. Ultimately it was a good looking letdown imo. The long languid tracking shots look great, but they're at least partially a cover for Dylan's score and songs, most of which aside from "Knockin'" are sub-Dylan. If Garrett's reasons for going lawman and putting himself in direct opposition to his ex-best-friend are ever explained, I missed them.

I get the symbolism in Garrett's ability to just snap his fingers and send decent men to dangerous situations and/or their deaths (Jack Elam, Slim Pickens, Richard Jaeckel) -- it's a film from 1973, I mean duhhh. It's not a total failure, but the script and editing have a lot of slack in their slacks. Kristofferson was great -- reminded me a little of Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise, this beautiful package of star-power suddenly on the scene, almost too pretty to look at.

"Ultimately it was a good looking letdown"--basically agree. It was towards the end of a long cycle of elegiac westerns (more came later, but they started to slow down), so the general mood is familiar. It does look great, and I love "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (memorable sequence by a pond, I remember).

try The Ballad of Cable Hogue next

It Always Rains On Sunday - 1947

Really great British film from the late fortys, made by the same director as two of my favorite films, Kind Hearts and Coronets and Dead of Night. Reminded in parts of some of the neorealist Italian films of the postwar period, both in the way it was relatively lacking in the glamour so commonly associated with cinema of the time, and the way it didn't shy away from the seamier sides of life in post-war Britain. Definitely recommend to anyone who hasn't already seen it.

Governor Wallace (Robards) doing the same thing to Garrett that Garrett does to his fellow sheriffs and deputies, but trying and failing to motivate him with money, is an interesting splinter under the skin in the script, but that brings it back to Garrett's reasons for being willing to kill his friend. "Times have changed"? I think the allegory needs a little more rigor than that. Just a little, not much.

Looking at the credits, I see Rudy Wurlitzer also wrote Two-Lane Blacktop and Walker. Heh.

xp to myself & clemenza