Last (x) movies you saw

Frederik B - Over what period of time did you see all that? And what were the highlights?

Clouds of Sils Maria (Assayas, 2014)

how was this

10 days. Highlights were Amour Fou, rewatching Journey to the West, Horse Money and Dust in the End (that final one on 35mm!!) discovering Josephine Decker as my favourite new American filmmaker, that the Danish films Key House Mirror and In Your Arms were extremely good for Danish films, and being shocked and stunned by finnish roadmovie They Have Escaped and the 5½ hours of From What Is Before. And also La Sapienza, had no idea who Eugene Green was.

The lowlight was Still the Water, which I don't like at all.

I wrote about Clouds of Sils Maria here Short version: It is quite good, but I will never be a huge fan of Olivier Assayas.

Dust in the Wind god dammit.

Don't you like Carlos Frederik, really one of the best films of the last few years I think.

Yeah, I like Carlos, and Summer Hours even more. But I don't love love them, and I don't love his filmmaking as a whole. Not the way I love for example Claire Denis, where, even when I don't really love something like Bastards, I still like it as another film by Denis. I think I don't care for Assayas' favorite themes, and I think he at times handles them in an uninvolved matter.

really you never saw Clementine before, Wm? Top 3 Ford for me.

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 21, 2015 9:22 PM

Should I record She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Cheyenne Autumn this Saturday?

If I can claim a favorite working director, it's Assayas.

He's a decent 84th place.

who are the 83 above him

Robert Redford.

he's only 78

Wm, yes

Is Emmanuel Olivier still alive?

saw him move

before Carlos, the last Assayas I sorta loved was Les destinées (2000). Usually good tho.

(best Limoges china movie evah)

Watched The Drop this morning because Gandolfini, but he didn't get much to do, mostly imitate Tony Soprano in fussy bossypants mode, even when he was killin' a guy. One okay monologue, but otherwise a dim bulb surface: he couldn't really think he was likely to get away with this shit, but I figured he mainly just wanted outta this fuckin' life one way or the other, and Lehane's novel of his screenplay of his short story confirms my figure in passing. Tom Hardy and the rest of the cast are real good, as good as the writing allows, which is good enough, except for G.'s character, Cousin Marv. The dog's good tool and he doesn't get killed---ooo spoiler, but often dogs do get killed, esp. to show that the movie daringly deals with serious human concerns, but this flick, though decidedly whattayagonnadoo fahgeddaboutit familiar and minor, doesn't lean on that shit, so respect.

agghhh, the dog's good *too* I meant--shaddap you!

Dream Castle (James B. Harris, 1973)
McCabe and Mrs Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
Ceddo (Ousmane Sembene, 1977)
Sanka (Kaneto Shindo, 1972)
Happiness (Aleksandr Medvedkin, 1934)
A Canterbury Tale (Powell & Pressburger, 1944)
Les Creatures (Varda, 1966)
Go Go Second Time Virgin (Wakamatsu, 1969)
Ukrainian Rhapsody (Parajanov, 1961)
To Sleep With Anger (Burnett, 1990)
Affair in the Snow (Kiju Yoshida, 1968)
Inside/Out (Rob Tregenza, 1997)
Tod und Teufel (Peter Nestler, 2009)
Waiting (Peter Nestler, 1985) (short film)

Highlights aplenty: Dream Castle is a favourite of one-time ilxor (?) (Kevin John Bozelka), thought I'd give it a go and this might be the best film Richard Pryor was in -- as crackhead using his disruptive energies, further distorting the dream logic -- you really didn't know where this was going at all, as if surrealist principles had been way too rigorously applied that when the end came you couldn't believe you hadn't seen it. Time to wake up! Ceddo is pure crystal ball today, with its Muslim guerrillas taking over parts of Africa, has some great music and might be slightly overshadowed by the greatness of Xala. A Cantebury Tale is surely P&P's most under-screened classic on Brit TV (have never seen it). I don't think anyone has written scenes of friendship as well as these guys. Must get to Canterbury in spring. Inside/out is a more than a curio although I got a shagged out copy. There is enough flair in the B&W, the light comes through strong enough at those windows, even if it doesn't exactly illuminate the darkness in this obliquely told story of inmates in the asylum. The threat and violence of the police/authority are never far away which raises it above technicals into more of what I mostly look for from film. Peter Nestler is a contemporary of Straub/Huillet and Tod und Teufel puts together his Nazi grandfather's story -- from his photographs in East African to films made in the v early days of film. Nestler is so sharp, one of the greats - he actually never makes anything out of the family connection (mentioning 'questions that persisted' but that's about it). Nestler doesn't let the personal interfere -- we need to think too -- by letting the images and quotes from his father's diary stand for itself, stating facts almost bloodlessly, and not editing this way or that so that the contradictions are allowed to breathe.

The Thief of Bagdad (Powell, Berger, Whelan, Korda, Korda & Menzies, 1940)
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (Powell/Pressburger, 1942)
Olive Kitteridge (Cholodenko, 2014)
Silence (Shinoda, 1971)
Blow Out (DePalma, 1981)
A Most Violent Year (Chandor, 2014)
* Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1937)
The Game (Fincher, 1997)

how was Silence?

After mulling on it for a few days, it's much better than I gave it credit for at the time — I was exhausted and dozy, and have a dim view of religion on the best of days so it was hard to see the central conflict as anything but folly. But of course that's one of the big crises that Rodrigues, the Jesuit main character, has to deal with — what's the value of a faith that brings so much misery along with a reward that can't be seen? I should watch it again, less tired and in a better frame of mind. The ending is plenty intense.

I loved "Sils Maria" . Gets added points from me for making Binoche and Stewart tolerable.

Actually my Binoche admiration resurfaced with "Camille Claudel 1915" but this one
took it a step higher.

Stray Dogs (Tsai, 2014) 4/10
Law of Desire (Almodovar, 1987) 8/10 (rewatch)
Get on Up (Taylor, 2014) 3/10
It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934) 8/10 (rewatch)

Terminator 2
Looper
Inherent Vice

And The Imitation Game -- forgot about that one.

Stray Dogs (Tsai, 2014) 4/10

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), 9. februar 2015 00:51 (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whoah, dude. Not okay.

yeah, eyebrow is raised

It's from 2013!

lol

my least favorite Tsai film. Liked the cabbage scene though.

b-b-but the pictures? the angles, the light, the architecture, the curves, the colors?

All wonderful, particularly in the last third. But this time there was no, ah, objective correlative, as Eliot would say.

that penultimate shot (you know the one)? No reason to be longer than three minutes. Tear rolls down, I get it.

It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934) 8/10

Whoa, dude. Not okay.

Well, perhaps those final two shots could stand to lose a couple of seconds (though I want that second passing train!), but that's still only the final part of the film, doesn't change the spellbinding images of the rest of the film. Man, I want to see it again. And I thought I would get another chance, in a month or so, but can't make the screening :(

xp doesn't even deserve that bundt

i saw jupiter rising last night. it's bad, undeniably bad, but at least somewhat campy & colorful about it. even so, the inert heroine, repetitive structure (capture, rescue, repeat), chemistry-free romance, and overfamiliar "hey guess what you are now the magic queen of everything!" plot engine fight hard to negate the tiny flicker of goodwill earned by gorgeous special effects and the occasional lateral into oddball nerdery. like an extended homage to terry gilliam's brazil for...uh, some reason?

though it's obviously an expensive and therefore an "important" film, the story seems awfully ramshackle, like something thrown together in last minute desperation. why the business with the bees? just because they're "genetically programmed to recognize royalty" or w/e? avatar did it better, and that's hardly a high bar. and are the wachowki's really so bereft of ideas that they have to recycle the matrix's basic concept? disappointed, though i can't say i was expecting much.

^ harder to say why i went out to see a distant, late sunday showing of an almost certainly terrible movie in the middle of a blizzard :/

lol, jupiter ASCENDING, what i get for posting in the middle of the night. and i had a lousy "asc." pun all worked out ahead of time, too >:[

Maidan (2014, Loznitsa) 7/10
*Female Trouble (1974, Waters) 9/10
In Which We Serve (1942, Coward, Lean) 7/10
Adult World (2013, Coffey) 6/10
Force Majeure (2014, Ostlund) 5/10
Joy of Man's Desiring (2014, Cote) 6/10
*The Immortal Story (1968, Welles) 7/10
Edge of Tomorrow (2014, Liman) 6/10
Touki Bouki (1973, Mambety) 9/10
The Milky Way (1969, Bunuel) 7/10
*It's All True (1993, Krohn, Meisel, Wilson) 8/10
*Secret Agent (1936, Hitchcock) 6/10
*Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969, Kennedy) 7/10
All Through the Night (1942, Sherman) 6/10
*The Woman on the Beach (1947, Renoir) 8/10
Appropriate Behavior (2014, Akhavan) 7/10
Hands over the City (1963, Rosi) 7/10
*Under the Skin (2013, Glazer) 7/10
End of the Road (1970, Avakian) 6/10
*The Trial (1962, Welles) 7/10
I Am Suzanne! (1934, Lee) 6/10
Archipelago (2010, Hogg) 6/10
*Exhibition (2013, Hogg) 8/10

Glad I'm not the only one, re: Force Majeure.

I like it more than that, but I'm not partisan. Play is better. But some of the scenes I think are great.

Sicinski didn't much like it either:

THE BALLAD OF FORCE MAJEURE

There's an avalanche a-comin', an avalanche of praise...
Seems like everybody's lovin' Ruben Ö these days....
But I can't seem to hop aboard that Ruben Östlund train....
His films are dumb and ugly, other critics are insane....

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/an-act-of-god-brings-a-family-man-tumbling-in-bitterly-funny-force-majeure/Content?oid=4858449

EX MACHINA.
I liked it. Surprised I can find next to no talk about it on here, I thought it might have a whole thread.

!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!
Might seem like a minor thing but I kept wondering how the skin worked, since it fits on different robot bodies yet looks like the robot's own skin but that doesn't explain another robot's arm seamlessly fitting. Maybe the skin changes its shape and color?

Runaway Train (Andrei Konchalovsky, 1985) ...Fuckin A

Oh yeah, with Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca De Mornay---now that's what I call the 80s! Except De Mornay had short, runaway boy hair, and innumerable freckles, and the screenplay was adapted from one by Kurosawa. His distinctive way of developing character through action (and vice-versa) came through well enough.
Recently found myself in deep-for-me-focus on Joan Crawford, in Grand Hotel and Mildred Pierce. I don't remember ever having previously found my concentration so concentrated by her concentration, and after waking up in the middle of the night and the movie, both times (it's a tcm thing, but not my usual). Seems like she's really listening to and reacting to the other actors, never showboating, but always the magnetic center, going ever forward. Mind you, she's providing a dynamic reserve, a vibrant surface (helps to be immensely photogenic), and maybe delivering lines that Stanwyck or Davis would make too vivid, too multi-dimensional, like when she says that she never used to drink at all, but learned it from men (says it with some wry satisfaction, but just via a subliminal smirk, mostly being clear as ever, the businesswoman and divorcee reporting back from Mexico vacay)