Last (x) movies you saw

The ending of "Daisies" was pretty amazing. Def gonna have to see it again.

Interstellar (Nolan, 2014) 5/10
*Key Largo (Huston, 1948) 7/10
*Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) 10/10
*Down Terrace (Wheatley, 2009) 8/10
Meantime (Leigh, 1983) 8/10
The Stag (Butler, 2013) 5/10
*Calvary (McDonagh, 2014) 8/10

The Babadook (Kent, 2013) 6/10
Mr Turner (Leigh, 2014) 7/10
Leviathan (Zvyagintsev, 2014) 7/10
Goodbye to Language (Godard, 2014) 8/10
Interstellar (Nolan, 2014) 5/10
Winter Sleep (Ceylan, 2014) 8/10

Stolen Kisses (Truffaut, 1968) 8/10
Fanny & Alexander (TV version) (Bergman, 1982) 9/10
The Aviator's Wife (Rohmer, 1981) 7/10
Amarcord (Fellini, 1973) 7/10
Bend of the River (Mann, 1952) 6/10
Man of the West (Mann, 1958) 7/10
Ride the High Country (Peckinphan, 1962) 8/10
Breaking the Waves (Von Trier, 1996) 6/10
Vampyr (Dreyer, 1932) 8/10
Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2002) 6/10
I Confess (Hitchcock, 1953) 7/10
Seven Men from Now (Boetticher, 1956) 6/10

Norte, End of History (Diaz, 2014) 8/10
Citizenfour (Poitras, 2014) 7/10
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Jackson, 2002) 6/10
Twice in a Lifetime (Yorkin, 1985) 4/10
Test (Johnson, 2014) 7/10

Decalogue 3 & 4 (Kieslowski, 1989) - Saw a lot of these about 20 years ago, now being re-shown at the ICA. The latter was so engrossing - a story where paternity is questioned, provoking a change in the father/daughter relationship (which actually is more than hinted at in the first scenes of quasi-sexual play) and are then given expression in the next hour, in all its strangeness. Their conversations -- how do we sort this out? -- are powerful and sensitively played. There was an awful intro given at the beginning. I would've loved to know what the reception to this was in Poland at the time but no...

Winter Sleep (Ceylan, 2014) - we know Ceylan can do landscape and he does much of that here but I also loved the cosy rooms, where the very long conversations took place, with its harsh and cold statements. Comes with classic Chehkovian humour too (think its based on one of his stories).

Ping Pong Summer (Tully, 2014) 2/10
Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951) 8/10

Adieu au langage (Godard, 2014): 9/10
Museum Hours (Cohen, 2012): 8/10
Frozen (Buck & Lee, 2013): 5/10

during November

Other Guys, the (2010, McKay) 3/10
St. Vincent (2014, Melfi) [first hour only, power outage]
All of Me (1984, Carl Reiner) [open matte] 8/10
Interstellar (2014, Nolan) 7/10
Wide Awake (1998, Shyamalan) 2/10
Prince and the Showgirl, the (Olivier, 1957) 4/10
Wet Hot American Summer (Wain, 2001) 3/10
Hateship Loveship (Lisa Johnson, 2013) 4/10

Bird People (Ferran, 2014)
In the Basement (Seidl, 2014)
Anticipation of the Night (Brakhage, 1958)
Manufactured Landscapes (Baichwal, 2006)
Holy Motors (Carax. 2012)*
Phoenix (Petzold, 2014)
A Christmas Tale (Desplechin, 2008)
Interstellar (Nolan, 2014)
Apocalypto (Gibson, 2006)

Shorts:
Satellit (Sørensen, 2013)
Puff Puff Pass (Daneskov, 2013)
Daimi (Grahtø Sørensen, 2012)

Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979, Micklin Silver) 7/10
Actress (2014, Greene) 8/10
Leo the Last (1970, Boorman) 5/10
*David Holzman's Diary (1967, McBride) 9/10
Sex and Broadcasting (2014, Smith) 6/10
*The Lost One (1951, Lorre) 8/10
*Vampyr (1932, Dreyer) 10/10
Burroughs (1983, Brookner) 6/10
Pulp: a Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets (2014, Habicht) 5/10
The Imitation Game (2014, Tyldum) 5/10
Angel and the Badman (1947, Grant) 7/10
The Lighthouse Keepers (1929, Gremillon) 8/10
Little Lise (1930, Gremillon) 8/10
National Gallery (2014, Wiseman) 8/10
*Le Jour Se Leve (1939, Carne) 7/10
*Gueule d'Amour (1937, Gremillon) 6/10
*The Sacrifice (1986, Tarkovsky) 9/10
The Rover (2014, Michôd) 6/10
My Girlfriend's Wedding (1969, McBride) 7/10
Bad Hair (2013, Rondón) 7/10
*Paris, Texas (1984, Wenders) 7/10
Mommy (2014, Dolan) 4/10
The Last Wave (1977, Weir) 7/10
Miami Blues (1990, Armitage) 8/10
Remorques (1941, Gremillon) 7/10
*Mon oncle d’Amérique (1980, Resnais) 9/10
Countdown (1969, Altman) 5/10
The Americanization of Emily (1964, Hiller) 6/10

*Paris, Texas (1984, Wenders) 7/10

Ah, just saw this last night. I could have sworn I'd seen it before in the late 80s but I didn't have any memory of any of the scenes so I guess not.

Dressed To Kill (8/10)
Violette Noziere (8/10)
Le Camion (6/10)
McCullin (8/10)
Nightcrawler (7/10)

Decalogue 5 & 6 (Kieslowski, 1989) - pretty inspired of the ICA to screen these. They have cinematic qualities (the yellow filter in five as an example) and they are so interestingly told, so how does the lawyer, a wondering youth and a taxi driver come together? Well you can imagine it easily but there is plenty of distance set-up at the beginning.

Loved how Kieslowski's need to maintain a balance in the world led to strange paths and taking risks w/plot and script. So in six the woman would surely call the police on her stalker, but balance must be achieved -- she must return that blank pure infatuation, these things can happen to all of us at any age, not just male youths lusting after the unattainable -- so I certainly went a bit easier on it than in any other set-up by another director (you can imagine how awful this would've been if that was a Brit).

los angeles plays itself (2003, thom Andersen) 4/5
force majeure (2014, ruben ostlund) 2.5/5
la belle noiseuse (91, rivette) 3/5
the to do list (2013 Maggie carey) 2.5/5
august: osage county (2013 john wells) 3.5/5
the one I love (2014, Charlie McDowell) 4/5
the color of lies (99, chabrol) 2.5/5
the kings of summer (2013, Jordan Vogt-Roberts) 5/5
scarecrow (73 schatzberg) 1.5/5
that awkward moment (2014 tom gormican) 1/5
a night in old mexico (2013 Emilio aragon) 1.5/5
they might be giants ('71, Anthony Harvey) 3/5
happy Christmas (2014, swanberg) 4/5

Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (7.5)
JFK (7.0)
Bad Company (6.0)
Numéro deux (???)
Nightcrawler (6.5)
Fantastic Voyage (6.0)
The Love Machine (6.0)
White Heat (9.0)
Reservoir Dogs (9.0)
Barry Lyndon (10.0)
The Turin Horse (7.5)

Model Shop

scarecrow (73 schatzberg) 1.5/5

I like it, but you definitely need a high degree of tolerance for every kind of '70s self-indulgence imaginable.

it's just a wtf when put next to

august: osage county (2013 john wells) 3.5/5

which requires a high degree of tolerance for every kind of contemporary 'prestige' botch imaginable

*Parked (Byrne, 2010) 4/10
Out Of Here (Foreman, 2014) 7/10
Dallas Buyers Club (Vallee, 2013) 6/10
Two Days, One Night (Dardennes Bros., 2014) 7/10
Cube 2: Hypercube (Sekula, 2002) 3/10
Killer Of Sheep (Burnett, 1977) 7/10
*A History of Violence (Cronenberg, 2005) 10/10

scarecrow is junk, h8 when movies treat their blank stock deadbeat characters w/ such undeserved sympathy and reverence

i could see ppl argue that hackman and pacino redeem it from that criticism, but theyd be v wrong, and projecting from their other, better performances

Nuit et Jour (Akerman, 1991) - great screening tonight. Introduced by Olaf Möller, a critic I don't know of but who gave pretty much the best intro a film could have. Funny, sharp, got people to focus on what mattered, didn't spend anytime mechanically giving away the plot, some killer background detail (a proper cinephile), just the right length. Loved his description of catching this film, attending it as the only person in a screening on its one week run in his native Cologne. Touched on the colours (he got a boner over the oranges; I like the light blue coloured pillows a bit more), and I'd add that I loved how Akerman uses colour to point to a crucial change of feeling in Julie's attitude at the very end.

Also possibly interesting to compare this to La Mama et La Putain, which I'm sure Akerman was aware of. There are way more differences than the similarity, which is an inversion of the same plot, i.e. a threesome with the woman in the middle.

Agreed with almost all of what Möller said. Other things that set you on speculation: for the first time I was perhaps made aware of a De Sadean type streak in her. Drama in a confined space, characters are sort of cardboard cutout who spew these quasi-philosophical matter to try to make sense of (in this instance) their in relationship feelings. Her interests in Bausch and her macabre dance sorta works its way through in here.

Great way to end cinema in 2014. May catch Solaris but I've seen that.

The Trip To Italy : (2/10 for the scenery) My God this shit was an unfunny and annoying waste of time. No, haven't seen the first one. Was wishing Coogan and Bryden (or whatever his name is) would drive off one of the many picturesque cliffside roads.
Passion (DePalma) : 7/10. I like that BDP can still do freaky when he wants to/can. He can still do wonders with the crappiest/hammiest acting and some remarkable set pieces.

wonders, huh

If he can keep me watching Rachel McAdams' high school drama class stylee because his mise en scène and editing etc is so badass then - yes- wonders...

*Red Dawn (Milius, 1984)
The Road to Utopia (Walker, 1946)
*Sullivan's Travels (Sturges, 1942)
Pom Poko (Takahata, 1994)
Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984)
New Tale of Zatoichi (Tanaka, 1963)
A Colt Is My Passport (Nomura, 1967)
Il Sorpasso (Risi, 1962)
Blue Ruin (Saulnier, 2013)

i watched 'adult world' (2013/14? scott coffey) on a whim b/c i like emma roberts and evan peters so much on american horror story and it was surprisingly good -- rich characters and funny, and i say this despite 1). scenes from inside the carrier dome 2). jonathan franzen being name checked & acknowledged by a transvestite & 3). john cusack (not a fan); i give it the j crunch seal of approval, emma roberts is the best actress of anyone under 30 (? at least def 25) 5/5

I liked her in both Lyme Life and Palo Alto--especially the latter.

Settlement (Loznitsa, 2001)
Landscape (Loznitsa, 2003)
Revue (Loznitsa, 2008)
Shivers (Cronenberg, 1975)
Down to Earth (Costa, 1994)
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (Menshov, 1979)
The Hole (Tsai, 1998)*
La Ceremonie (Chabrol, 1995)
Ida (Pavlikowski, 2013)

Shorts:
The Train Stop (Loznitsa, 2000)
Portrait (Loznitsa, 2002)
The Factory (Loznitsa, 2004)
Artel (Loznitsa, 2006)
Blockade (Loznitsa, 2006)
Miracle of St Anthony (Loznitsa, 2012)
Letter (Loznitsa, 2012)*

L'inconnu du lac (Guiraudie, 2013): 9/10
Ida (Pawlikowski, 2013): 6/10
Birdman (Iñárritu, 2013): 7/10
Slaying the Badger (Dower, 2014): 8/10
P'tit Quinquin, Pt.1 of 4 (Dumont, 2014): 8/10
Bad Boy Bubby (De Heer, 1993): 6/10
Kaguyahime no monogatari (Takahata, 2013): 9/10

Sils Maria : 8/10
Maps To The Stars : 8/10
P'tit Quinquin : 8/10
Mr. Turner : 7/10 (probably an 8/10 but my experience of viewing it ruined by horrible chatty old couple seated next to me. And the snoring usher behind me once I changed seats. Movie viewing in NYC sucks.)
The Kingdom Of Dreams And Madness : 9/10

There was a guy at my Birdman screening who was driving me nuts

These two folks seemed to be out-of-towners from their accents. Can't say where from. But older moviegoers in NYC, bar the occasional loony at Film Forum screenings, tend to be pretty quiet throughout the film. These two... Every time Turner's housekeeper showed up onscreen the husband would guffaw like an idiot. Each time one of the many landscape shots presented itself they would "ooh" and "aah" loudly and "Can you believe the photography?" was repeated maybe 5 times before I got up. The clincher was when Constable appears onscreen, Turner greets him AS CONSTABLE, and the old doofus asks his wife "Is that Sargent? Is that Sargent the painter?"

*Belle de Jour (1967, Bunuel) 9/10
Remember My Name (1978, Rudolph) 7/10
*Images (1972, Altman) 5/10
The Homesman (2014, Jones) 8/10
Bodyguard (1948, Fleischer) 6/10
*The Long Goodbye (1973, Altman) 10/10
*Stranger by the Lake (2013, Guiraudie) 9/10
Still a Brother (1968, Greaves, made for TV) 8/10
Black Angel (1946, Neill) 6/10
Tip Top (2013, Bozon) 6/10
Venus in Fur (2013, Polanski) 7/10
Dear White People (2014, Simien) 6/10

Going to finally get round to torrents I d/l long ago and now have a bit of time to watch.

Subarnarekha (Ritwik Ghatak, 1965) - From the standpoint that almost all of Ghatak's films are about the partition of India this can turn the plot that would in any other normal context seem bizarre and improbable into something that makes sense as painful expression.

Rosenbaum (and I'm sure others) have pointed this out before but its worth repeating the guy had an incredible ear for sound and song.

The killing toward the end is an incredibly well made and riskily constructed scene.

Inherent Vice (PTA, 2014) 7/10
Nightcrawler (Gilroy, 2014) 5/10
The Case of the Grinning Cat (Marker, 2004) 7/10

• Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jireš , 1970)
• I Know Where I'm Going! (Powell & Pressburger, 1945)
• Great Expectations (Lean, 1946)
• The Wreck of the Mary Deare (Anderson, 1959) (A childhood mystery solved -- I saw part of this in the early 70s and some images stuck with me, but I never knew the name of the film. Poor Gary Cooper, he moves and acts like a zombie through this.)
• Hotel Monterey (Akerman, 1972)
• Pygmalion (Asquith/Howard, 1938)
• A Matter of Life and Death (Powell & Pressburger, 1946)
• Nebraska (Payne, 2013)
• Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (Mazursky, 1969)

More torrents...i'm not making it easy on myself this xmas season:

Three Resurrected Drunkards (Nagisa Oshima, 1968) - love the theme song, which gets your very much needed attention but otherwise you need bits of background reading to fill in the gaps. You get they are Korean immigrants trying to escape to Japan (and the Vietnam War) but its all told in such a wacky way. Why are the military uniforms being stolen? Who is the girl trying to help? Why is she naked? (oh wait we don't need to know the answer to that one!) What does register is Japan's contempt for Korea, and if you've seen a few films by Oshima that's all going to slot nicely. I actually like how the political story isn't told as a political story would, it obscures almost all the points its trying to make rendering it virtually without effect into a bored film eating at itself.

The Big Mess (Alexander Kluge, 1971) - this is an SF film based on this baby. Didn't mean to screen these together but there are similarities btw the two films: There is even less of a pretense of plot, also 1x naked woman (oh the 70s!). otoh its a different look, full of colorful intertitles, space and its ships look as if it was made for children's TV, also has scenes filmed in what look like factories and in dumps (the apocalypse comes cheap).

The BFI should've possibly screened this in their SF season.

Yunbogis diary (Oshima, 1966) is a 20 min short/piece of agit that is about the same thing as Three Resurrected Drunks.

The Truck (Duras, 1977)
Numero Deux (Godard, 1975)

Didn't see these back to back or anything but this feels the most 70s French cinema with a capital C dbl bill ever right now.

Too tired to move away from the screen today:

Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio, 2010) - there are some great films that depict fishing communities, or have fishing as an activity (Varda's La Pointe Courte, Benacerraf's Araya). Promising as that is on its own what we are then made to watch is a father-son relationship that wasn't more than sketched out. The film at the end tells you it is about a specific region of Mexico (which one supposes the film wants to help to protect) but you really wouldn't know.

Juliette, or Key of Dreams (Marcel Carne, 1951) - made some great films, all the more disappointing. Its like Carne tried to make this way too 'poetic' with the dream sequences (all too eager for a return at the end). Laughingly short of La Belle et la Bete, which this is clearly going for.

Couple of shorts - one by Chantal Akerman J'ai Faim J'ai froid, always witty and rad, and Thanatopsis by Ed Emshwiller (its on UBU web).

Round it off with the the 1st EP of Berlin Alexanderplatz (Fassbinder, 1980). Yes the whole gang are here, the music is swingin' and everyone is going to have a good time.

Suspended Vocation (Raul Ruiz, 1978) - first film in a long time where I got, say, 40% of the thing. Maybe less - doesn't impact on whether I liked it. Some things you need to watch in the cinema and this is one of them but hey they won't screen em. Got a couple of others to watch.

Last trip to the cinema in '14 to see:

Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972) (comments on the Solaris thread)

Historic Center (Kaurismäki, Costa, Erice & de Oliveira, 2012)
Lemminge (Haneke, 1979)
Frozen (Lee & Buck, 2013)
Hannibal & Jerry (Wikke & Rasmussen, 1997)
Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)*
Skyfall (Mendes, 2012)*
Beyond (August, 2012)
Dazed & Confused (Linklater, 1993)
Tabu (Gomes, 2012)
Winter Sleep (Ceylan, 2014)
Two Days, One Night (Dardennes & Dardennes, 2014)

There's a stretch of Christmas family stuff right in the middle of that :)

Hateship Loveship (Liza Johnson, 2013) 4/10
My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki, 1989)* 8/10
Jour de fête (Tati, 1949) 9/10

oops, Totoro is 1988.

Ustad Allauddin Khan (Ghatak, 1963) - straight + short portrait of the Indian music guru.

Morgan! (Karel Reisz, 1966) - hilarious comedy about a man obsessed with Marxism and Gorillas. Vanessa Redgrave is great as well, but the best is Morgan's mother: "You know wot you are son? A class traitor" (I can't get the accent sorry)

The Fall (Peter Whitehead, 1969) - quasi-doc of riots (over race, war and art), shouting and violence and assassination in the streets in the late 60s. Features a hot European model, and psychedelic music. Diverting, as I've seen Far from Vietnam. There is one scene where a chicken is brutally killed (it was performance art!) and if it was released today I bet this would cause the most fuss.

Asthenic Syndrome (Kira Muratova, 1989) - this has to be one of the best films of the 80s. Starts off as a woman mourning her husband for the first 30 mins. She cries and wails in the streets, picks fights, resigns from her job. Its in B&W. Then it turns out its a film within a film so it cuts off to colour and a pretend discussion of "the issues" this has raised. No one is interested, they all walk out into the world. And we stay in to walk anarchy on film for another two hours that would make Bunuel proud! The only Russian film to have been banned during perestroika (it actually has lots of scattered detail around Soviet life in the 80s).

It's a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946) 4/10
Pride (Warchus, 2014) 6/10
Ida (Pawlikowski, 2014) 6/10
Inherent Vice (PTA, 2014, rewatch) 7/10
Foxcatcher (Miller, 2014) 3/10

It's a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946) 4/10

Harsh!

First viewing.

It's a baffling movie. The mix of the hysterical, treacly, and cute got on my nerves, and when the fantasy happens it's to my eyes so incongruous as to baffle me: George has been so masochistically good that why on earth should angels look at him as a Job needing a comeuppance?

That's not why Clarence showed up.

Never said it was...?