Last (x) movies you saw

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)

Didn't mean to slight the cast (or director or screenplay adapters) of Runaway Train; the whole thing kept me going.

Gotta say TS is BS on Hamlet: of course his emotional turmoil is about more than avenging the honor of his mother and/or his father duhhhhhh. This is the point. He's a crazy man who is deliberately acting crazy, and a brainstorm in the worst sense, a creative spirit who can't make a new vessel of expressive containment (not one that isn't cracked or won't crack, because he's cracked)HE CAN'T FIND AN OBJECTIVE FUCKING CORRELATIVE AND THAT'S THE POINT THE SUCCESS NOT THE FAILURE OF SHAKESPEARE. Damn, Tom. Don't trust anybody who says anything is "objective" while writing about art (he already said Goethe made a Werther of Hamlet, Coleridge made him a Coleridge).

The 50-Year-Argument (6.5)
The Normal Heart (7.0)
Runner Runner (4.0)
Terri (7.5)
Trucker (6.5)
A Most Violent Year (7.0)
The Art of Getting By (6.0)
Stardom (6.5)
Looking for Johnny: The Legend of Johnny Thunders (6.5)
Ball of Fire (7.5)

Oh, right, Ex Machina doesn't come out in America until April. Didn't realise this was a british film. I hope it does fairly well.

Nesmluvená setkání
Morel's Invention
The Rat Savior
The Ruling Class
Jesus Christ Superstar
The 13th Apostle
The Spiders

Nesmluvená setkání aka Unexpected Encounters, is a mid-90s Czech made-for-TV Strugatsky adaptation. (My mission to see ALL Lem & Strugatsky adaptations is nearing completion...) Very low budget, but such a great story. Morel's Invention... weird 70s Italian subtle sci-fi. (ie: nothing distinctly "sci-fi" on screen.) I'm not sure what puts me off this, but the story would have been great in another director's hands. Reminds me a bit of The Light at the Edge of the World, which I hated. The Rat Savior - 70s Croatian Twilight Zoney sort of thing. Imagine Pynchon writing a mashup of Rhinoceros and The Rats of Nimh. Ruling Class, JC - classics. The 13th Apostle is a late 80s Russian adaptation of The Martian Chronicles. Features Donatas Banionis reading a bit of Rocket Summer! My favorite Bradbury adaptation. The Spiders - early Fritz Lang. Before he got good. Interesting if you think of it as an early rough draft for Mabuse.

Pontypool (4)
Inherent Vice (7)
Whiplash (9)
Birdman (7)
Housebound (6)

Z (1969, Costa-Gavras, rewatch) 8/10
Still Alice (2014, Westmoreland ) 4/10
Early Summer (1951, Ozu, rewatch) 10/10

Morel's Invention... weird 70s Italian subtle sci-fi. (ie: nothing distinctly "sci-fi" on screen.) I'm not sure what puts me off this, but the story would have been great in another director's hands.

Er wasn't the book this is based on roughly adapted for Last Year In Marienbad? Very roughly admittedly, more of an inspiration really.

Dear White People (Simien, 2014) 7/10
Death By Hanging (Oshima, 1968) 7/10
Passion (Godard, 1982) 8/10
Patrick's Day (McMahon, 2015) 5/10
Citizenfour (Poitras, 2014) 7/10
Band Of Outsiders (Godard, 1964) 8/10
Pilgrim Hill (Butler, 2013) 6/10
Trampoline (Ryan, 2013) 6/10

i haven't heard of half these films, and yet i'm always on the look out for good things to watch. where do you guys hear about / watch all these?

Film blogs, magazines, screeners, word of mouth, ILE.

there are a lotta film sites, dl. Start w/ Keyframe Daily?

Pride (2014, Warchus) 7/10
Beyond Rangoon (1995, Boorman) 6/10
Excalibur (1981, Boorman) 7/10
Borgman (2013, van Warmerdam) 6/10
Snowpiercer (2013, Bong) 5/10
*The Suspect (1944, Siodmak) 7/10
*The Old Dark House (1932, Whale) 8/10
Devil and the Deep (1932, Gering) 5/10
Trial on the Road (1971, Guerman) 9/10
Ganja & Hess (1973, Gunn) 7/10
The Watermelon Woman (1996, Dunye) 5/10
Hard to Be a God (2013, Guerman) 7/10
Losing Ground (1982, Collins) 6/10
*Boyhood (2014, Linklater) 8/10
Jamaica Inn (1939, Hitchcock) 6/10

Love Death by Hanging, one of Oshima's best.

Trail on the Road looks great!

Here is the Time of the Assassins (Duvivier, 1956)
El AKA This Strange Passion (Bunuel, 1953)
Full Moon in Paris (Rohmer, 1982)
Koridorius aka The Corridor (Sharunas Bartas, 1994)
It maybe that Beauty has Strenghtened our Resolve (Philippe Grandrieux, 2011)
Portrait of a Young Girl in Late 60s Brussels (Akerman, 1994)
H Story (Nobuhiro Suwa, 2001)
Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2015)
Goodbye to Language (JLG, 2014)
Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2011)

Morel's Invention / Last Year In Marienbad - oooh, good news, there IS a version of this in a better director's hands, ha ha. Will have to watch that one. I don't known Resnais at all.

there are a lotta film sites, dl. Start w/ Keyframe Daily?

Thanks! Never visited it before.

Would love to see Trial on the Road, I was disappointed to see that Scarecrow doesn't have any Guerman on its shelves.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Ford, 1949)
The Professionals (Brooks, 1966)
The Holy Man (Ray, 1965)
We Are the Best! (Moodysson, 2013)
Gertrud (Dreyer, 1964)
Chef (Favreau, 2014)
Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang, 2013) - I'm with Frederik on this one -- fantastic film.
Manakamana (Spray/Velez, 2013)
Fury (Lang, 1936)

#TseamTsai!!

Men & Chicken (Jensen, 2015)
Bowling for Columbine (Moore, 2002)
Elephant (Van Sant, 2003)*
Ratcatcher (Ramsay, 1999)
Days of Being Wild (Wong, 1991)*
My Blueberry Nights (Wong, 2007)
The Grandmaster (Wong, 2013)*
Elena (Zvyagintsev, 2011)
How to Survive a Plague (France, 2012)
This is Not a Film (Panahi & Mirtahmasb, 2011)*
Our Neighbor Miss Yae (Shimazu, 1934)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, 2010)*
La Libertad (Alonso, 2001)
Liverpool (Alonso, 2008)
The Jungle Book (Reitherman, 1967)

Shorts
The Abyss (Gad, 1910)
Night and Fog (Resnais, 1955)*
Elsa la Rose (Varda, 1966)

Pasolini (6/10)
Sauvage Innocence (7/10)
Razzia sur la chnouf (6/10)
God's Little Acre (6/10)
Dans l'oeil de Buñuel (7/10)

The Overnighters is super good and everyone should watch it immediately
Vic and Flo Saw a Bear is dark as fuck and is a good sneaky gangster film that you don't entirely recognize until it's over

Crimes of The Future - Early experimental Cronenberg.
Piccadilly - Anna May Wong's masterpiece. Second best Roaring 20s nightlife flick ever.
The Battle of Algiers - Wow.
The Bed Sitting Room - Favorite nuclear holocaust comedy.
Bambule - Intense "society shits on the youth" flick. Screenplay by Ulrike Meinhof.
Accion Mutante - Crazy cult sci-fi.
All That Jazz - Bob Fosse slays. Also, Roy Scheider is amazing in this.
20 Feet From Stardom - I usually don't watch documentaries, but. Merry Clayton, fuck yeah.

Second best Roaring 20s nightlife flick ever.

so...?

Pandora's Box.

Masculin Feminin (Godard, 1966) 7/10
The Heart of Bruno Wizard (Rasmussen, 2013) 4/10
Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1956) 8/10
Yojimbo (Kurosawa, 1961) 7/10
The Thief of Bagdad (Berger/Powell/Whelan, 1940) 6/10
Pickup on South Street (Fuller, 1953) 8/10
A Nos Amours (Pialat, 1983) 8/10
Earth (Dovzhenko, 1930) 5/10 (low mark partly because of the terrible quality print used for the Mr Bongo DVD - avoid!)
Mary Reilly (Frears, 1996) 5/10
The Tenth Victim (Petri, 1965) 7/10
Ministry of Fear (Lang, 1944) 8/10
Rancho Notorious (Lang, 1952) 7/10

Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2014) 8/10
Jodorowsky's Dune (Pavich, 2013) 7/10
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Andersson, 2014) 8/10
The Camerman (Sedgwick/Keaton, 1928) 7/10
L'il Quinquin (Dumont, 2014) 8/10
Mad Max 2 (Miller, 1981) 8/10

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (2014, Elkabetz-Elkabetz) 8/10
Je Tu Il Elle (1976, Akerman) 6/10
A Summer's Tale (1996, Rohmer) 8/10 (rewatch)

I guess i should gett to Gett.

Pain of Love (1992, Malmros) 6/10
The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949, Meredith) 7/10
The LEGO Movie (eject, 0:45)
A Most Wanted Man (2014, Corbijn) 6/10
Birdman (2014, Innaritu) 5/10
*Wild Rovers (1971, Edwards) 6/10
The Missing Picture (2013, Panh) 7/10
Loving (1970, Kershner) 6/10
*The Landlord (1970, Ashby) 7/10
*Jealousy (2013, Garrel) 8/10
John Wick (2014, Stahelski) 4/10
Abuse of Weakness (2013, Breillat) 6/10
*Forbidden Planet (1956, Wilcox) 8/10
The Last of the Unjust (2013, Lanzmann) 8/10

Potentially courting controversy with some of these...

Regarding Susan Sontag (Kates, 2014) 7/10
Nate and Margaret (Adloff, 2012) 7/10
The Blue Gardenia (Lang, 1953) 6/10
Into the Night (Landis, 1985) 4/10
Tom at the Farm (Dolan, 2013) 5/10
Young and Beautiful (Ozon, 2013) 5/10
Test (Johnson, 2013) 8/10
Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (Cote, 2013) 4/10
The Dog (Berg and Keraudren, 2013) 7/10
*Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch, 1932) 8/10
Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) 5/10
The Earrings of Madame de... (Ophuls, 1953) 8/10
The Exterminating Angel (Bunuel, 1962) 7/10

only if you liked other Ozu movies more than TS.

It's my first. Not off to a great start, I admit, but at least I see from scanning the Ozu thread that I'm not the only one who finds TS tedious.

why didn't you like it? just because you found it slow or was it more than that

I liked TS but because twenty years ago it was the only one of, like, two available on VHS I had no point of comparison. It took Floating Weeds, Late Spring and Early Summer to prompt another look.

(xpost) Don't mind slow, but saying something obvious, and saying it obviously, definitely calls attention to the pacing. The only character who held any interest for me was the widowed daughter in law; the idea of prolonged mourning as manifested through an attachment to her late husband's parents was the point where the film went somewhere I didn't wholly expect from it. Make Way For Tomorrow, Ozu's supposed inspiration, and Ikiru, his film's most obvious contemporary, are both considerably more thoughtful and moving films, I thought.

if you liked Setsuko Hara, then by all means continue watching.

I had kind of hoped that Floating Weeds had been my first Ozu, mostly because I read a fabulous takedown of TS years ago which I can't seem to find on the web now, and I didn't want my opinion to be too skewed against it (thought I've certainly read a lot more writing in praise of the film), but TS was the one that TCM was showing.

"Ikiru" over "Tokyo Story"? I need to rewatch "Ikiru" then. I always found it one of Kurosawa's most heavy-handed films.

same here

I'm not going to create a binary, by the way. Ikiru has always been my least favorite of that fifties sequence.

man, the gays are really overrating Test

Nah. 6-8 range is about right. No one's called it a great film or masterpiece.

Ikiru seems heavy handed, mostly because (as I discovered when I finally watched it) many critics seem to frame the story as being about a heartless bureaucrat who finally justifies his life with one meaningful gesture upon hearing he's going to die. But I don't think the film itself is that simple. In between his diagnosis and getting the playground built, he experiences a few drunken nights out (the first in his life, we are lead to assume) and an ill advised flirtation with a younger woman. What makes the film something more than sternly moralistic is that Kurosawa gives equal weight to all of these things; it isn't saying that a meaningful life equals doing good deeds, but rather that a fulfilling life equals fun and romance *and* good deeds. That might not sound too profound, but it is certainly more so than "be nice to your aging parents."

Test, well, I dunno--it seemed minor at the time, but I found it really sticking with me. I've said elsewhere what I liked about it: enormously emphatic lead, authentic period detail, great final line of dialogue. The dream sequence bugged me, but (without getting too spoiler-y) I'm sure that without it, the film would have been called out by some for skirting its own issue a bit too much.