Last (x) movies you saw

Heavy Metal (Potterton)- This kind of sucks, but in a way I like, if that makes any sense. Like the stuff holding it back (the inexcusably awful wraparound story/structure, the totally thoughtless mix of tones and styles, the weirdly chunky pacing) is charming in a sort of un-businesslike way? And that first segment is an unabashed ripoff of Dan O'Bannon and Moebius's "The Long Tomorrow" (to the extent that I'm surprised not to see Moebius/Giraud's name acknowledged anywhere in the credits with a "based on..." like Richard Corben and Bernie Wrightson were for their direct adaptations) but it's a good ripoff, aside from the wank material for 13-year-old boys that infects every other segment but O'Bannon's WWII horror short (the filmmakers make up for it by having this be the entirety of the Corben segment). Stupid as hell, would probably watch again.

*Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma)- Still brilliant. I haven't gotten into his post-Untouchables filmography yet (aside from seeing Mission: Impossible in its theatrical run, and discovering Massive Attack and Pulp thanks to the Mobile, AL public library's habit of stocking its CD section with too many soundtracks and some dumbass label guy just licensing every song he could with the word "spy" in the title) but this and Blow Out are the best De Palmas I've seen yet, with the technical brilliance and nasty satire working perfectly together.

The Warriors (Hill)- Not counting this as a rewatch since it's the first time I've seen the unadulterated original theatrical version (the DVD director's cut is just pointlessly shit). It was a little irritating seeing this in a theater full of people who started out laughing at everything (including what I'm pretty sure was the same dude who shows up most weeks at the Trocadero's Movie Monday and has an incredibly loud and distinctive, fully-enunciated HA), the joke being, I guess, "the seventies happened," but eventually they no longer felt like they had to prove they could dig it (do you see what I did there haha please kill me) and the movie itself stepped up with the shit they should have been saving their enthusiasm for (Baseball Furies et al) and a good time was had by all. Like every Walter Hill movie I've seen, it's a much quieter, slower affair than anyone raised on post-Tony Scott action movies expects, and that's a great thing.

Snowpiercer (Bong)- LOVED. I am if anything too willing to suspend my disbelief for someone whose work I admire, and admittedly that let me paper over some logic and story problems (the underwhelming Ed Harris cameo, the upper-class riot at the end that makes no sense except as a Bioshock homage, that security guy who, come on, no, he was fucking dead) for everything else (the production design, Song Kang-Ho and Go Ah-Sung, TILDA SWINTON, the sniper faceoff). I might have more calm and measured thoughts on this after it's had some time to settle in.

*The Game (Fincher)- Mixed. I haven't seen this in like 14-15 years, and ended up liking it more than I did at the time (it's held up better than Seven, at any rate) but the screenplay (by a pair of ridiculous hacks responsible who haven't done anything else even remotely good, including part of the shared blame credit for Catwoman) is just so cheap that any sense of consequences goes out the window after about halfway through. The script is so basic (and those guys' CV so fucking terrible) that I have to wonder if the little playful nods to vastly superior paranoia thrillers (the film loop from The Parallax View, the overflowing bloody toilet from The Conversation) came from Fincher. At least Harris Savides makes the whole thing look gorgeous, with a really well-considered color scheme that still feels natural.

*Lost in Translation (Coppola)- Rewatched kind of by accident thinking it was another Savides joint (it's not; it's Spike Jonze regular Lance Acord, and Savides only started working with Coppola on Somewhere). Still a spectacularly well-shot movie, which does a little to make up for the shameful lack of curiosity and borderline racism (I feel that it comes down juuust barely on the right side of that, but "failure to render the Japanese characters as human beings" is nothing to be proud of). Bill Murray is still fun, but this much later it's not exactly a revelation that Murray can do Sad. And I'm not sure how much of the like I have for Johansson is just for the costume design, because she is adorable here. 's ok.

*Odilon Redon or The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity (Maddin)- Started watching Guy Maddin, had a sudden sleep attack 20 minutes into Careful and had to put it off until another day with more free time. Rgh. Still one of my favorite short films ever.

Mother Joan of the Angels (Kawalerowicz)- This was kind of devastating. I didn't actually know going in that it was loosely based on the Devils of Loudun case, which gradually dawned on me when characters started discussing the late, lamented "Father Garniec." Lucyna Winnicka is wonderful as Mother Joan (I would even favorably compare her to Vanessa Redgrave in the same role in Russell's The Devils), with a really impressively athletic, dance-like performance, and there are some Dreyeresque full-frame closeups (including a really frightening closeup of panicking horses near the very end).

Jump (Konwicki) (aka Somersault or Salto)- This was a bit rougher going; I'm not sure how much of that was deliberate obtuseness, poor translation (or idioms that just couldn't translate), or drastically different cultural context, but I was flailing for a while. Also not the most visually stylish movie, especially right after Mother Joan. Still, though, Zbigniew Cybulski is a hugely charismatic weirdo (I love how his leather-jacketed Man of Mystery is constantly tripping over shit and is never, ever "cool," just a totally bemusing, flop-sweaty, anxious mess) and there is no one who can convince me that David Lynch hasn't seen this dance scene and taken notes.

Corben's Den is mainly notable for the variety of bodies, bodily transformations and stunning rendering techniques; the story never had much going for it. I've never seen the animated film but I've heard Den in particular was a mess.
News of a comic adaptation never brings a smile to me but the looming prospect of a live action remake of Heavy Metal does sound very interesting. How on earth would they do Den? How many statuesque actors can do action and drama while naked?
Also wondering if they would change the story roster to go with the retrospective Heavy Metal canon.

I've always wanted to see a nudist drama with well known actors just to see what it'd be like. I'm sure the public would freak out and hate it regardless of merit.

I thought Calvary was pretty good. Nice looking too. not much to say about it.
I don't know if Gleeson did one of this year's best performances but it would be nice to see him win an Oscar.

Your writeup on The Game sent me to IMDB to see who wrote it, and holy shit, those guys have carved out quite a career for themselves—to quote Grosse Pointe Blank, "it reads like a demon's resume." The only thing they've written that I found even remotely enjoyable was Primeval, the giant-crocodile movie. And, okay, the ending of Terminator 3 was pretty good in a Beneath the Planet of the Apes kind of way. But other than that...those guys are true garbage merchants.

Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut, 1960)
* Don't Look Back (Pennebaker, 1967)
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (Godard, 1967)
Shin Heike Monogatari (Mizoguchi, 1955) -- at the Birmingham Museum of Art's Japanese Film Festival
Diary of a Chambermaid (Buñuel, 1964)
* Snowpiercer (Bong Joon Ho, 2013) fulfilling my promise to pay for a viewing to make up for torrenting it to see it the first time

*The Fisher King 8/10
How Green Was My Valley 8/10
Under The Skin 8/10
*On The Waterfront 10/10
Bernie 6/10

Just saw Step Up: All In this weekend. The 3D dancing was entertaining but every emotional moment in it was absurd. Favorite non-dancing moment was either the lead dude running into his dance crew of like 12 people standard around their studio in the morning and being told they were giving up the dream and heading back to miami (each person had one suitcase and they appeared to have just one cab waiting for them), the lead dude screaming "I live in a tiny freaking storage closet!" during his big moment or the hammy ballroom instructor saying "do the math - he was her back-up dancer, now he's her private dancer."

Also the plot hinged around performing on a VH1 reality dance competition named the Vortex hosted by a woman who acted like a cross between Lady Gaga and the MC from Cabaret. Would watch!

12 people standing around, rather. only one or two actually spoke when they dropped the bomb on their crew leader

Salvo (2013) 6/10
Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) 7/10
Abuse of Weakness (2013) 6/10
Sounder (1972) 8/10

I'm wondering if the 1972 Best Picture lineup is the best of the last forty years.

The Emigrants

The One I Love. Just finished watching it on Amazon. Really, really well-written; it starts out as an indie romantic dramedy, then about halfway through it gets Twilight Zone-ish really suddenly, and before the end it's almost horror. Never misses a step, plot-wise, and the two lead actors—Andrew Duplass and Elisabeth Moss, who are never offscreen—are terrific.

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (7.0)
The Dog (7.5)
Dog Day Afternoon (8.0)
The Long Goodbye (8.5)
Begin Again (5.5)
Images (5.5)
California Split (9.0)
Tanner '88 (7.5)
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (7.0)
Rich Hill (6.5)

I was predisposed to really like Rich Hill--from the trailer, it looked like a good documentary companion for Boyhood--and it's beautiful to look at, but for whatever reason, I just didn't find the three boys that compelling. Should see it, though. David Edelstein gave it a good review:

http://www.vulture.com/2014/08/movie-review-rich-hill.html

Blue Ruin 7/10
Mud 6/10
Only Lovers Left Alive 5/10 (The scenes of the couple driving around an eerie, deserted Detroit were fantastic and there was an "end of history" angle that could have been explored more. Instead, Jarmusch was more concerned with giving props to Jack bloody White.)

Westfront 1918 (1930, Pabst) 7/10
Jealousy (2013, Garrel) 7/10
I Stole a Million (1939, Tuttle) 5/10
The Road Back (1937, Whale) 6/10
Letter from Siberia (1957, Marker) 8/10
Zulu (1964, Endfield) 7/10
*All the President’s Men (1976, Pakula) 9/10
Fifi Howls from Happiness (2013, Farahani) 8/10
*Blonde Venus (1932, Sternberg) 7/10
That Man from Rio (1964, de Broca) 7/10
*The Devil Is a Woman (1935, Sternberg) 6/10
*The World According to Garp (1982, Hill) 6/10

*rewatches

Out of curiocity, which Sternberg-Dietrich collab do you like the best. (Both Venus and Devil seem admittedly to be for the fanatics.)

Blonde Venus is a total bore.

This ...

http://sunsetgun.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cb7469e2017eea5fc051970d-400wi

Not boring.

jack white is a bozo but that was a really well measured, meaningful moment in that film, i think, one realer & more successful than the film's other tributes to art by virtue of being unexpected, rooted in the contemporary; people just trying to comprehend a building with the same distance & remove one feels from an artist. just that moment of stillness & casuality it allows, this kind of dumbstruck interruption. really nice. it's so much a more daring, adventurous tribute than one directed at ~the moody ruins of detroit~ more broadly.

Blonde Venus is sufficiently crazy to be unboring, esp that bit role from Hattie McDaniel.

Easily Shanghai Express for me. Best shadows, best train, plus Anna May Wong.

http://teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Anna-May-Wong-2-Marlene-Dietrich-Shanghai-Express.jpg

Devil Is a Woman is basically a sex comedy, at least up til Lionel Atwill beats the crap out of her.

xpost sorry for me it just felt awkward and it was like jarmusch was using the scene as an excuse to give his buddy a shout out. even on the scale of late 20th-early 21st century century music, giving jack white a tribute is laughable imo.

i couldn't agree more musically but it didn't feel like that, to me. it just feels fresher & more valuable to make a film about some stonery rock guy who loves jack white than it does to make a film about another guy who ~loves thoreau~, though, you know? embracing the present is the only way to make the guy's canon something more vibrant than just consensus; claire denis & mark twain are both on the picture wall, & that's important i think. jack white is a bozo i repeat is a capital b bozo but his name is a punctum amongst the kind of autopilot gravitas conferred by, whatever, keats, or whoever else crops up.

I think all in that string of 7 are great, but I'd probably rank them:

Scarlet Empress
Blonde Venus
Shanghai Express
Dishonored
Morocco
The Devil is a Woman
The Blue Angel

The middle 5 really in any order, tho.

oh i forgot to count The Blue Angel; first or second.

Nah, Von Sternberg needed Hollywood's help.

Or at least their glittery resources.

what did Emil Jannings ever do to you?

cockadoodledoo

The Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014) 6/10
To Catch a Thief (Hitchcock, 1955) 8/10
Two Days, One Night (Dardenne bros, 2014) 7/10

Tristana (Bunuel, 1970) 8/10
Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957) 8/10
Jeanne Dielman 23, Quai Du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975) 9/10
Please Sir! (Stuart, 1971) 5/10
Boy Meets Girl (Carax, 1984) 6/10
Uzak (Ceylan, 2002) 8/10
Christmas Evil (Jackson, 1980) 7/10
Le Beau Serge (Chabrol, 1958) 7/10

Godzilla (2014) 6/10
Tati Danielle (7/10)
Gohatto (6/10)
The Dance Of Reality (8/10)

Have to add I thought the effects work and direction in Godzilla was stunning at times but the film needed to be more fun. Less human drama, more monsters slugging it out (in daytime, too, please!) next go-round.

bourne identity (liman, 02)
il bidone (fellini, 55)
lorna's silence (dardennes, 08)
grey gardens (75)
floating weeds (ozu, 59)
iron man (favreau, 08)
double indemnity (wilder, 44)
they all lie (pineiro, 09)
the bird with the crystal plumage (argento, 70)
bad lieutenant (ferrara, 92)

I've move The Blue Angel and Morocco up too.

Days and Nights of the Forest (Ray, 70) 7/10
Le Week-end (Michell, '14) 6/10
Devi (Ray, 60) 8/10

Boyhood (Linklater, 2014)
A Time to Live, A Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1985)
A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1989)
King of the Children (Chen Kaige, 1987)

Two Days, One Night (Dardenne bros, 2014) - Cotillard held this, a story that wasn't as compelling once you got into it: repetitive conversations and reasonings, obvious ploys to liven these up (a scuffle!), other points in the plot were faulty: a suicide attempt in the afternoon then off again for another round of talks by eve, the secret ballot that wasn't secret.

Charulata (Satyajit Ray, 1964)

The Kentucky Fried Movie (Landis)- Fun enough. Z/A/Z is comfort food (at least until they turned, independently, to shit) and Landis handles stuff like the Enter the Dragon/Dr. No sequence well, if weirdly overlong. Biggest laugh of the whole movie for me was absolutely "IT WAS A DREAM OF EXTRAORDINARY MAGNITUDE" for no reason I can easily defend.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Nimoy)- I had an illustrated picture book of this as a kid that I got at a church sale (also: Back to the Future, which I also have not seen beginning to end, ever) and had no idea what the fuck was going on. This is only the second classic Trek movie I've seen (after Khan) and it's...alright. Kind of sadly programmatic, and Nimoy isn't great at handling big moments (Kirk's son dies to practically no effect except the unintentionally hilarious KLINGON BASTARDS KILLED MY SON), with the exception of that brief shot of the crew on a cliffside while the burning Enterprise falls through the atmosphere, but come on, you would have to try to fuck up a shot like that. But the chummy comedy stuff is great, and makes me really want to track down IV (that's the whales, right?).

*Dune (Lynch)- I love this goddamn movie so much. The screenplay is terrible, the producer-mandated voiceovers are worse than the similar ones in Blade Runner, the hamfisted exposition (like the introduction from Irulan, who then disappears for the rest of the movie and is never seen again) only obfuscates things more, and there are some shockingly bad performances from Brad Dourif and, as much as I hate to say this, Kyle McLachlan, but none of it matters. This is one of the five or so best production-designed movies I have ever seen, there's more than a little of the Eraserhead/Elephant Man Lynch (anything with the Guild Navigators, Giedi Prime, the disturbing in-utero shots of Alia) and it just conveys the awe and scale of the book far better than the "faithful" miniseries version could ever hope to.

*James and the Giant Peach (Selick)- I have mixed feelings about this one. Selick is a genius, one of the best animators working today (I'd put him up there with Miyazaki and Brad Bird if it weren't for Monkeybone), but this feels too Disney-by-numbers in the relationships between characters and the god-fucking-awful Randy Newman songs. I keep telling myself "he was in Performance, he did some well-regarded stuff in the seventies" but I just can't stop hating him. And Richard Dreyfuss starts grating immediately, though I'm sure kids would find him funny.

*The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene)- for/in class. There is nothing I can possibly add to the nearly 100 years of writing and discussion on this movie.

*Coraline (Selick)- Love it. Everything in this movie just works perfectly, nothing lands wide of where it should be, and I'm still noticing little details every time I see it (like how unnerving the mouse circus scene becomes by animating the mice in a lower framerate).

Charulata (Satyajit Ray, 1964)

xyzzzz, what did you think of this?

ah, never mind, heading to the Ray thread now

it's a Labor Ray weekend!

Two Days, One Night (Dardenne bros, 2014) - Cotillard held this, a story that wasn't as compelling once you got into it: repetitive conversations and reasonings, obvious ploys to liven these up (a scuffle!), other points in the plot were faulty: a suicide attempt in the afternoon then off again for another round of talks by eve, the secret ballot that wasn't secret

the non-secret ballot was a plot point, not a plot hole; idk what an overdose of Xanax is likely to do to someone whose tolerance is already clearly quite high, didn't give that bit too much thought tho tbh

Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1983)
The Key (Carol Reed, 1958)
Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
*Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)
Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)

*Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (Herek, 1988) 8/10
I Am Divine (Schwarz, 2013) 7/10
Belle de Jour (Bunuel, 1967) 9/10
*The Spy Who Loved Me (Gilbert, 1977) 7/10
*The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan, 1997) 7/10
Premium Rush (Koepp, 2012) 7/10
When Night is Falling (Rozema, 1995) 3/10
The Living Daylights (Glen, 1987) 5/10
The Big Clock (Farrow, 1948) 8/10
Boyhood (Linklater, 2014) 8/10
Moonraker (Gilbert, 1979) 5/10
*Meatballs (Reitman, 1979) 7/10

the non-secret ballot was a plot point, not a plot hole

Certainly a plot point: one of the votes was based on the assurance of a secret ballot. So why was everyone that voted for her waiting in the cafeteria after? Surely the eight that were working could work out the other eight were the ones who voted for her? Maybe it didn't matter as they got their bonus, but the guy who needed assurance was up for renewal later that year..

The way I read it, nobody really thought it would be a secret (she spent half the film telling people which way everyone else would vote!) and that's why the dude was worried in the 1st place, but he did the right thing anyway.

I didn't think this film was that great but it was kinda interesting re peer pressure but it was basically an episode of survivor if anyone remembers that

I'm recalling it differently: she might have mentioned a name or two of people who didn't mind, and some of them were phoning each other, but for most of the time she would simply say what the split was, and on one occasion when asked to say who were voting this way or that she said she couldn't give names.

You're probably remembering right tbh

i think she started giving names then when one pushy guy who was clearly against her wanted to know who was for her, she thought "hmm bad idea".

repetitive conversations and reasonings

i thought it did a great job of showing the entire gamut of legit & non legit reasons people had for shafting her. (e.g. I wanna help but I really really need the money, I wanna help you but I'm scared of the boss, I wanna help you but new patio!) In fact almost to the point where you could criticise it for too perfectly showing all points of view (and too perfectly timing them - three or four rejections then just when she'd lost all hope the guy at the football pitch).

Also the last scene might have made her too saintly, except it was utterly plausible - the boss's offer, and her reaction.

Anyway, fucking loved it.

Agree the last scene was plausible - for one the guy who might've lost the job if she accepted the offer was a man who voted for her.

More importantly - one thing this film was silent on was her depression. It actually looked like she wasn't that ready to go back, or if she did all the problems would have re-surfaced again. Her suicide attempt meant she had reached rock bottom, but she cried for help in time and I think in the end she was renewed - and by end of the weekend it really didn't quite matter whether she had a job or not. She told her husband she would start looking for work at 12, and I for one believed her.

Yeah it was basically a happy ending - the happiest possible, anyway.

Forgetting the Girl-UGH! Watched this on HULU and found it disturbing. It was painful to watch and predictable and I wasn't into the characters but I continued because it looked so Lifetime.

Nobody's Daughter Haewon (Hong, 2013)
The Exterminating Angel (Buñuel, 1962)
Blind (Vogt, 2014)*
Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen & Coen, 2013)
Dhoom 3 (Acharya, 2013)
Moon (Jones, 2009)
Mauvais Sang (Carax, 1986)
Sans Soleil (Marker, 1983)
The Birth of Love, (Garrel, 1993)
Tras-os-Montes (Reis & Cordeiro, 1976)

Shorts:
Paris vu par Gare du Nord (Rouch, 1964)
The Afghan Alphabet (Makhmalbaf, 2002)

I wasn't a huge fan of Jealousy, found it a bit too 'sweet' for what should perhaps hit harder. But I liked Birth of Love. A bit similar plot, really, but the mood was much more developed, I found.

Tras-os-Montes is really, really something. A mix of docu-fictionary study of northern Portugal mixed with myths and legends, mixed with voice-overs on economic woes and emigration. Really weird, but def worth seeing. Reis inspored a whole school of Portuguese films, and it's somewhat like a Our Beloved Month of August.