Last (x) movies you saw

I watched Food Inc a couple days ago.
Very depressing for several reasons.
Main one I can think of is what can be done about Monsanto. It is so monumentally counterproductive to the human race and global environment to have those shits continue to exist. But seems that things are being forced down a dead end route, so hoping something can be done. I need to make sure I never buy another product made by them or affiliate firms if that is possible.

Kwaidan (Kobayashi, 1964)
Naked Lunch (Cronenberg, 1991)
The Disappearance of Alice Creed (Blakeson, 2009)
Sparrow (To, 2008)
Virirdiana (Bunuel, 1961)
La Strada (Fellini, 1954)
Festen (Vinterberg, 1998)
Babe: Pig In The City (G. Miller, 1998)
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (R. Miller, 2009)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Bros. 2013)

A really good run here. Festen and Inside Llewyn Davis are all timers. I didn't know much about Festen beforehand, but it blew me away. So emotionally raw and the first speech by the son is one of those Great Moments of Film I think. ILD had lots of stuff that immediately appeals so it was v. easy to enjoy. I'd never seen La Strada or Viridiana properly before so it was good to catch up with those, enjoyed them both.

The last ten I watched:

Blanche (Walerian Borowczyk, 1971) - 8/10 I liked how this looked 'medieval' without being too stylised one way or another. Just clean and simple.
The Beast (Walerian Borowczyk, 1975) - 6/10 - Downton Abbey with even more bestiality, basically.

Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968) - 9/10
Cry of the Banshee (Gordon Hessler, 1970) - 2/10
Mark of the Devil (Michael Armstrong, 1969) - 5/10 - an accidental witch-finder trilogy. MotDevil is proto torture-porn; there are no banshees in CotB, only women being continuously assaulted; and WG is a terrific western transplanted to 17th century England.

Gone Girl (Fincher, 2014) - 5/10
The Zero Theorem (Gilliam, 2014) - 5/10
Thunderbolt & Lightfoot (Cimino, 1974) - 7/10
Life of Crime (David Shechter, 2014) - 6/10
Topaz (Hitchcock, 1969) - 5/10
Night Moves (Reichardt, 2014) - 7/10
Red River (Hawks, Rosson, 1948) - 8/10
The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears - (Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, 2014) - 7/10

Make that 13.

The Beast (Walerian Borowczyk, 1975) - 6/10 - Downton Abbey with even more bestiality, basically.

I wont forget that ending in a hurry. Here's the last ten movies Ive watched

Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946) 7/10
Goldfish Memory (Gill, 2003) 2/10
The Lady from Shanghai (Welles, 1946) 6/10
A Prophet (Audiard, 2009) 8/10
Gone Girl (Fincher, 2014) 6/10
Lincoln (Spielberg, 2012) 6/10
Room 237 (Ascher, 2012) 7/10
They Live By Night (Ray, 1948) 6/10
The Butcher Boy (Jordan, 1997) 10/10 (rewatch)
Bigger Than Life (Ray,1956) 9/10

The Lady from Shanghai (Welles, 1946) 6/10

Guh?!

I thought it was a bit of a mess tbh but not without its charms either

They Live By Night (Ray, 1948) 6/10

equally guh

at least Butcher Boy, proper

yeah what a wonderful movie. i just saw altman's thieves like us, from the same source material; the differences in approach are really interesting to observe, especially since it's a subdued, less stoner-y altman. really interesting to see how it works with sound & synchronisation to solve the problem the final close-up in they live by night had so utterly met.

A Field In England (8/10)
Paradise For All (7/10)
Upsetter (Lee Perry docu) (6/10) would've been a 7 if they'd
gotten someone other than a seemingly stoned and clueless
Benicio Del Toro to narrate

Pasolini (2014, Ferrara) 8/10
Mr. Turner (2014, Leigh) 7/10
The Sandwich Man (1983, Hou, Wan, Zhuang) 7/10
Justice, My Foot! (1992, Chow) 6/10
Hill of Freedom (2014, Hong) 8/10
The Plea (1967, Abuladze) 9/10
*A City of Sadness (1989, Hou) 10/10
20,000 Days on Earth (2014, Forsyth, Pollard) 7/10
The Double (2013, Ayoade) 5/10
The Honey Pot (1967, Mankiewicz) 6/10
Moderato Canatabile (1960, Brook/Duras) 6/10
16mm shorts by Bill Morrison (1990-96)

Fury (Ayer, 2014): 4/10
Gone Girl (Fincher, 2014): 6/10
In a World (Bell, 2013): 7/10
We are the Best! (Moodysson, 2013): 7/10
The Swimmer (Perry, 1968): 7/10
Double Down (Breen, 2007): 3/10 (but not without its charms)

Arrest Bulldog Drummond (Hogan, 1939)
The Red Shoes (Powell/Pressburger, 1948)
One Wonderful Sunday (Kurosawa, 1947)
Magic Boy (Daikubara/Yabushita, 1959)
I Confess (Hitchcock, 1953)
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Fassbinder, 1972)
Mountains of the Moon (Rafelson, 1990)
Saboteur (Hitchcock, 1942)

Le jour se lève (Carne, 1939) - great for so many reasons. The leads (Gabin of course!) and photography are wonderful but what makes this really distinctive is the superb dialogue. There is so much in those lines. Not mere wiseracks, fake witty-ness and cartoon characterisation that you had in a lot of those film noirs at the time.

Europe '51 (Rossellini, 51)) 8/10
My Country, My Country (Poitras, 2006) 7/10
Love is Strange (Sachs 2014) 7/10

Lilith (1964)

^stolen by Gene Hackman in a 3-minute scene

Truly!

Breaking News (To, 2004)
Les Enfants Jouents à la Russie (Godard, 1993)
Three Colours: White (Kieslowski, 1994)
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Ceylan, 2011)*
Ossos (Costa, 1997)
Kings of the Road (Wenders, 1976)
Persona (Bergman, 1966)*
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Russo & Russo, 2014)
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Olsson, 2011)
The Absent One (Nørgård, 2014)
The Heat (Feig, 2013)
Force Majeure (Östlund, 2014)
Concrete Night (Honkasalo, 2013)

Shorts:
De l'Origine de XXIe Siècle (Godard, 2000)

I've linked to a blogpost I wrote on ...Anatolia. Great to revisit it, it looked a bit different on 35 mm than it did on DCP. Force Majeure is also a really, really good film, though perhaps not as good as Play.

omg I saw St. Vincent and it was cringe-a-minute, just awful

some of the dissenters on Force Majeure have given me pause, but I'll see it

It really is good. Östlund is amazing at using space and trajectory and architecture and all that. He's probably the best in Scandinavia at doing that sort of thing right now. Play has much more bite, though.

I see his last feature played the 2011 NYFF, but don't think anything's gotten a US run til this. I would've remembered a title like The Guitar Mongoloid.

The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga (2014, Oreck) 6/10
Nathalie Granger (1972, Duras) 4/10
La Région Centrale (1971, Snow) 7/10
The Overnighters (2014, Moss) 7/10
*Nosferatu (1922, Murnau) 8/10
*The Ghost Breakers (1940, Marshall) 6/10
Citizenfour (2014, Poitras) 7/10
Listen Up Philip (2014, Perry) 5/10
The Golden Boat (1990, Ruiz) 6/10

Halloween-y movies (no year/dir listed means I've seen it before)

Bride of Frankenstein
Paranorman (2012, Butler & Fell)
Night of the Living Dead
Dawn of the Dead
Night of the Hunter, the
Evil Dead, the
Evil Dead 2
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948, Barton)
Zombieland
Cabin in the Woods
Young Frankenstein
Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare (1987, Fasano)

also in October
Pina (2011, Wenders)
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972, J. Lee Thompson)
Gone Girl (2014, Fincher)
Overnight (2003, Montana & Smith)

The Music Lovers. It was wonderful, among my favourite Ken Russell films now.

*The Thief of Bagdad (Powell, et al) 9/10
X-Men: Days of Future Past (Singer, 2014) 6/10
Jodorowsky's Dune (Pavich, 2013) 7/10
They Came Together (Wain, 2014) 6/10
Nebraska (Payne, 2013) 4/10
Vamp (Wenk, 1986) 7/10

Listen Up Philip (Perry, 2014) 4/10
Mon Oncle (rewatched) (Tati, 1958) 7/10

Red River (Hawks, 1948) 8/10 *
Rome Open City (Rossellini, 1945) 9/10
Young Mr Lincoln (Ford, 1939) 7/10*
Deep End (Skolimowski, 1970) 8/10
The Babadook (Kent, 2014) 7/10
Seconds (Frankenheimer, 1966) 8/10

*rewatch

loooove deep end

Yeah it's incredible and "Mother Sky" is on the soundtrack! I really want this poster too

http://fmstcolgate.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/deep-end2.jpg

Whoa, that poster is gorgeous!
Have you seen Skolimowski's The Shout? One of my favorite underrated films ever. It's free to stream on Amazon Prime for some reason, even though it never got a DVD release in the US.

various Borowczyk shorts (L’amour monstre de tous les temps, Scherzo Infernal, a couple of Daniel Bird featurettes)
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Schlondorff & von Trotta)
*Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Herzog)
Lolita (Kubrick)
*Chinatown (Polanski)
ParaNorman (Butler & Fell)
*Mulholland Drive (Lynch)
Matthew Barney: No Restraint (Chernick)- I find Barney's process and approach fascinating and his art (what little of it I've been able to see, mostly in shitty torrents and photos of drawings and sculptures since it's not exactly accessible) almost totally stultifying so this was pretty much the ideal way to experience it
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Takahata)- the best movie I have seen in 2014, and not one that I expect to be bettered
*Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel & Dali)
The Dunwich Horror (Haller)- a failure, but a moderately interesting one. Dean Stockwell plays the thoroughly gross character of Wilbur Whateley as a sexually liberated post-hippie type (SO FUCKIN' SUAVE), though this translates more or less immediately to "date-rapey"; the script is a surprisingly faithful, literal rendition of the story (with some painfully obvious and incompetent rips from Rosemary's Baby) that more or less totally loses the point or any Lovecraftian atmosphere; and there are some fun, goofy solarization effects whenever they break out the monster prop
*The Trial (Welles)- Such a stark, ugly-beautiful film. Welles not getting the funding to construct sets was the best possible thing that could have happened, and Anthony Perkins is the perfect Josef K.
House (Obayashi)- Totally earns all the praise and hype it's gotten over the years. Fast, smart, thoroughly weird, occasionally legitimately scary (that eyeball-in-the-mouth scene honestly freaked me out a little) and goddamn hilarious.
*Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren)- This is the first time I've watched this so close to Mulholland Drive, and not with, say, a five-year break between screening the two, but even so, I'm embarrassed it took me this long to notice Deren's fingerprints all over Lynch's film. The sleeping and waking states, the multiple instances of one woman, the Hollywood setting, the elaborate suicide dream, the act of violence signified by a key, the telephone off the hook, everything.

went to a 35mm screening of The Signal (2007) the other night w/a post screening cast and crew Q&A session. Love that movie.

Gone Girl (Fincher, 2014) 6/10
Le Jour Se Leve (Carne, 1939) 7/10
Zabriskie Point (Antonioni, 1970) 8/10
Nightcrawler (Gilroy, 2014) 6/10
A Summer's Tale (Rohmer, 1996) 6/10
L'Age D'Or (Bunuel, 1930) 7/10
An Autumn Tale (Rohmer, 1998) 6/10
Lolita (Kubrick, 1961) 7/10
Wincester 73 (Mann, 1950) 7/10

Powaqqatsi (Reggio, 1988)
Naqoyqatsi (Reggio, 2002)
Burma VJ (Østergaard, 2008)
World on a Wire (Fassbinder, 1973)
In the Fog (Loznitsa, 2012)

Mostly catching up on stuff from DOX-directors. Starting tonight!

Just saw We Are The Best and loved every minute of it.seriously the most adorable film.

Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964)
*Robocop (Verhoeven, 1987)
Black Moon (Malle, 1975)
The Amazing Transparent Man (Ulmer, 1960)
John Wick (Leitch/Stahelski, 2014)
A Day in the Country (Renoir, 1946)
Harper (Smight, 1966)

Scarlett Empress. It has some of the best design I've ever seen in a film. All the sculptures, clocks, architecture, massive thrones and costumes are amazing.

Whiplash (Chazelle), 2014) 6/10
Purple Noon (clement, 1960, rewatch) 8/10
Effi Briest (Fassbinder, 1974) 4/10
September (Allen, 1987) 2/10

*Ondine (Jordan, 05) 4/10
Killing Them Softly (Dominik, '12) 7/10
Nightcrawler (Gilroy, '14) 7/10
Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho, '14) 8/10
Isolation (O'Brien, '05) 5/10
Cruising (Friedkin, '80) 6/10

The Immigrant (2013) 4/5
The Hitch-Hiker (1953) 3.5/5
Dust in the Wind (1986) 4/5
Brighton Rock (1947) 3.5/5
The House of the Devil (2009) 2/5
Daisy Kenyon (1947) 4.5/5
Phantom of the Paradise (1974) 3/5
Blue Ruin (2013) 4/5
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992; rewatch) 4/5
The Conjuring (2013) 2/5

*Poltergeist (1982, Hooper/Spielberg) 8/10
*Sebastiane (1976, Jarman) 5/10
Fucking Åmål aka Show Me Love (1998, Moodysson) 7/10
Nightcrawler (2014, D Gilroy) 6/10
Goodbye to Language (2014, Godard) 7/10
Glitterbug (1994, Jarman) 7/10
The Angelic Conversation (1985, Jarman) 5/10
Goya: Or the Hard Way to Enlightenment (1971, Wolf) 7/10
Kasaba [The Small Town] (1997, Ceylan) 7/10
*The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Wiene) 9/10
The Cat and the Canary (1927, Leni) 7/10
*My Uncle (1958, Tati, Eng version) 9/10
Baal (1970, Schlöndorff) 6/10
Rio das Mortes (1971, Fassbinder) 6/10

Diplomacy (2014, Volker Schlöndorff) 8/10 Dussollier and Arestrup are both brilliant in this despite it's minor flaws and occasional stagey clunkiness, it is very good.
A Hard Day (2014, Seong-hoon Kim) 5/10 The scenes where an inept corrupt cop is trying to hide his hit and run victim's corpse in his mothers coffin are beautifully executed, sadly it becomes ordinary type fare after that.
Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, Thom Andersen) 9/10 I couldn't believe this was nearly 3 hours long, it whizzed by and is stunningly passionate and brilliant.
Canopy (2014, Aaron Wilson) 3/10 Pretty but inconsequential shite.
The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2013, Daniel Geller , Dayna Goldfine) 3/10 some fucking vile characters who thankfully died eventually.. the end
The Lives Of Others (2006, Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck) 7/10

The Border (7.0)
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (6.5)
The Minus Man (6.5)
Less Than Zero (5.5)
Gone Girl (7.0)
Suspiria (6.0)
Mildred Pierce (2011--7.5)
The War Room (8.0)
Game 6 (4.5)
Goodbye to Language (6.5)
Halloween (7.0)

I see from Wikipedia that Halloween was released on my 17th birthday. I'd probably seen it 10 times when I started university a year later; it played at the theatre where I ushered my last year of high school. I remember making up a list of my favourite films that first year of university, and Halloween was pretty high. I could probably reconstruct what I saw in it, but I won't do it here. Today: a few iconic images, a nice feel for late-'70s suburbia in some of the build-up, JLC is affecting, and PJ Soles is PJ Soles. A lot of clunkiness along the way, and Nancy Loomis is a bit much.

quiet days in clichy (jens jørgen thorsen 1970) 7/10
coming apart (milton moses ginsberg 1969) 6/10

watched these coincidentally so near each other, are going for diff vibes for sure but are soo of the time, each def have some trancendent moments, like my orgy movies tinged w/ darkness pls thx

Marketa Lazarová (František Vláčil, 1967) - stunning recreation of the Middle Ages. Rivals Andrei Rublev for sickening violence. 1 point taken off for largely impenetrable plotting. (4/5)
The Ear (Karel Kachyna, 1970) - paranoia seeps out of the screen. Walks a fine line between black comedy and tragedy. Both of these films are more goodness from Second Run DVD. (4/5)
The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970) - probably the biggest damp squib of an ending I've ever seen. Awesome Morricone soundtrack. (4/5)
La Antena (Esteban Sapir, 2007) - Argentina's answer to Guy Maddin. Slightly too arch for its own good. Entertaining but needed a stronger narrative. (3/5)
Red Angel (Yasuzo Masumura, 1966) - the travails of a Japanese nurse in WWII. Things don't go well. Like a more violent Mikio Naruse. (4/5)
Blind Beast (Yasuzo Masumura, 1969) - sexual obsession, masochism etc. A bit dull. I didn't like Ai No Corrida either fwiw. (2/5)

Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell).

I had heard a lot of mixed things about this but I thought it was bloody brilliant! It's a play happening within the film, so a lot of the artificiality works a bit easier. It's funny. It has Wolf from Gladiators. Ken Russell has funny acting parts.
Imogen Millais-Scott was fantastic, she has such a great voice. She hasn't acted in much, it seems that she's been plagued with health problems. Apparently she was nearly blind when she filmed this.

It was a Italian DVD copy, thankfully it was also quite cheap.

1989 (Østergaard & Rácz, 2014)
Tomorrow is Always Too Long (Collins, 2014)
Visitors (Reggio, 2014)
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (Hara, 1987)
The Lanthanide Series (Espelie, 2014)
The Reunion (Odell, 2013)
Battle for Ukraine (Konchalovsky, 2012)
The Postman's White Nights (Konchalovsky, 2014)
Monsoon (Gunnarson, 2014)
The Iron Ministry (Sniadecki, 2014)
Nitrate Flames (Stopar, 2014)
Maidan (Loznitsa, 2014)
The Second Game (Porumboiu, 2014)
Cern (Geyrhalter, 2014)
Scenario (Widmann & Krause, 2014)
Journey to the West (Tsai, 2014)*
Songs for Alexis (Lind, 2014)
Concerning Violence (Olsson, 2014)
The Newsroom – Off the Record (Krogh, 2014)
The Look of Silence (Oppenheimer, 2014)
The Gold Bug (Sandlund & Moguillansky, 2014)
Storm Children – Book One (Diaz, 2014)
Sauerbruch Hutton Architects (Farocki, 2013)
Olmo and the Seagull (Glob & Costa, 2014)
Episode of the Sea (van Brummelen & de Haan, 2014)
The Fortune You Seek is in Another Cookie (Gierlinger, 2014)
Actress (Greene, 2014)
The Lack (Masbedo, 2014)
Horse Money (Costa, 2014)
The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (Honkasalo, 2004)
Portrait of Jason (Clarke, 1967)
The Corral and the Wind (Hilari, 2014)

Shorts
Moments of Silence (Bigert & Bergström, 2014)
The Mad Half Hour (Brzezicki, 2014)
The Land of Seven Sheep (Szymanska & Boege, 2014)
Beyond Zero 1914-1918 (Morrison, 2014)
Making Money Religiously (Prouvost, 2014)
Things (Rivers, 2014)
Reduit (Skoog, 2014)
Vampires of Poverty (Mayolo & Ospina)
Imagining Emanuel (Østbye, 2011)
Out of Norway (Østbye, 2014)

Yoyo
L'Aggression
The Inheritance
Guardians Of The Galaxy