Last (x) movies you saw

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.

plus: people working! I've complained for years that we don't get enough movies patient and curious enough to capture people at work. Extra points for Test doing so in less than 100 mins.

If you can get through Late Spring and not feel a thing, then yes, Ozu is not the filmmaker for you.

"be nice to your aging parents."

Possibly more to TS than this (its been ten years since I wacthed) but idk I think the mostly rude metropolitan art-house indie audience that likes his films these days needs a beating sometimes.

its ok, i saw it recently, v quaint. id take ikuru > tokyo story absolutely

you ppl are bonkers in the conkers

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Andersson, 2014) 8/10

raargh how how you seen it this?

If you can get through Late Spring and not feel a thing, then yes, Ozu is not the filmmaker for you.

― Eric H., Saturday, February 28, 2015 3:19 PM (3 hours ago)

Yes -- this is Peak Ozu for me.

Sscond the praise of 20 Feet From Stardom: most "music documentaries" have way too much talk, but this has thrilling performances, witty, candid editing & comments. (Second a ton of others on here, duh.)
Saw The Bicycle Thief again, right after reading the first two Neapolitan Novels, which is maybe why, this time, I thought the ending of the film was a bit soft---thought it for a second, but nobody's off the hook, not at all.

most "music documentaries" have way too much talk

Exactly! This especially drove me nuts with Soul Power from a few years back. The filmmakers had however many hours of priceless live footage available to them and they wasted a good third of the film on people saying nothing much at all.

And yes, 20 Feet From Stardom is one of the good ones.

There's a recent (2007) documentary about The Who that I loved, but I'd love it even more if most of the interviews with younger rock stars were edited out. Completely worthless bullshit.

Is the Jobriath docu any good?

Lucy -- 5/10
Death Proof -- 6/10
Big Eyes -- 6/10
Nightcrawler -- 6/10
Sightseers -- 6/10
Exhibition -- 7/10
The Homesman -- 8/10
CitizenFour -- 8/10
Los Angeles Plays Itself -- 8/10
We Are the Best! -- 8/10
It's Such a Beautiful Day -- 9/10

count me as another ikiru > tokyo story voter. Ikiru is top ten Kurosawa for me, maybe top five out of the 20 or so I've seen.

Only fear of the results has prevented me from launching a Kurosawa vs. Ozu vs. Mizoguchi poll.

Calvary, Stranger by the Lake, The National Gallery. Mostly a vast improvement on anything else I've seen this year, might have thrown together a film poll ballot if I'd seen them earlier.

Only fear of the results has prevented me from launching a Kurosawa vs. Ozu vs. Mizoguchi poll.

― Eric H.,

It could only have been your natural timidity.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Andersson, 2014) 8/10

raargh how how you seen it this?

― describing a scene in which the Hulk gets a boner (contenderizer), Sunday, 1 March 2015 00:07 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Screened at the Glasgow Film Festival

Birdman (5/10) - beautiful cinematography by Lubezki. I blame Iñarritu for the rest - including the unnecessary long takes.

Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (Karasawa, 2013)
Finding Fela (Gibney, 2014)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)
Ida (Pawlikowski, 2013)
Maps to the Stars (Cronenberg, 2014)
* Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)
* Alphaville (Godard, 1965)
Lola (Demy, 1961)

IDA: beautiful use of black and white.

Is "Test" Tokyo Story? Where'd that name come from?

It's a movie.

Ah OK, thought you were still discussing 50s Japanese films.

gettin all up on some Chappie tonight

Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)

I have watched this a few times now, it is so great.

i finished reading 'the devil's candy' last week and watched bonfire of the vanities just today -- funny that i def recall seeing this on hbo from when maybe i was 12?

anyway, p deservingly a bomb, hanks is so insanely miscast, so is willis & his narration is junk; mostly all the social justice/racial elements seem p tone deaf although i did lol @ "have you met so-and-so he's on the shortlist for the nobel prize. and he has AIDS", best scene is maybe kim cattrall's "crumbs" one, everything in a courtroom is garbage, most especially morgan freeman's speeches; airplane landing scene did not seem that impressive?

o and its crazy the movie ends w/ fallow, cmon it's about hanks

i guess the steadicam shot was cool, but not that special imo

def a baller move though to include your current gf photocopying her ass and such

Mr Turner (glad this didn't have the tone of the trailers I saw)
Rashomon

Ballad Of Narayama
I felt there was a good chance I'd be lukewarm on this but I was impressed, it's really good and its unusual for me to bother with all the DVD features after watching a film. I don't know an extensive amount about notable hardships creating films but this had some of the most extreme accounts I've ever heard: the main actress getting her front 4 teeth removed for the film (!!!) and the cast and crew actually living something close to the life of the characters for a year, cultivating the land and feeding off it, that hadn't been farmed in many years. One actor getting frostbite.
After the film finished I was dying to know how they did the teeth, but jeez, I never expected that!
I don't think there's a lot of Imamura in region 2. Might get more soon.

Also, I envied the smelly character for his cool barn bedroom.

Hellboy
First Name: Carmen
Igla
O-Bi O-Ba: The End of Civilization
Death Powder
Tetsuo
Pinocchio 964
Tetsuo II
Rubber's Lover

Igla kicked off the "Kazakh New Wave" in 1988, and is the closest thing to a Soviet "underground film" I've encountered. Stars the singer from Kino. O-bi O-Ba is a Kafka-by-way-of-Lem-influenced nuclear bunker survival piece from Poland.

I realized last week that I had never watched all of Japanese Cyberpunk, in order. It's only five films, so there we go. (Oh, I suppose I should tack Tetsuo III onto that now. Hmm.) I've defended Tetsuo II in the past. I'm not going to do that anymore. Everything else held up for me.

The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Huillet/Straub, 1968) 7/10
*The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963) 9/10
Citadel (Foy, 2013) 4/10
Mr Turner (Leigh, 2014) 7/10
Vic + Flo Saw A Bear (Cote, 2014) 8/10
Leviathan (Zvyagintsev, 2014) 8/10
*Passion (Godard, 1982) 8/10
Grey Gardens (Maysles, 1975) 7/10
*Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999) 9/10
Fat City (Huston, 1972) 9/10

*The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963) 9/10

I just watched this again too, and wholly agree with the ranking. Among its richer pleasures, I was surprised at just how jumpy the film still manages to make me.

Its been a long time since I saw it and I think its even better than I had thought. Its definitely one of the more misunderstood Hitchcock movies imo. Can a movie be hilarious and pants-shittingly frightening at the same time?

I say that every time I watch The Naked Gun

xpost

Pretty sure that the first time I watched it, I sat through the first half thinking "yeah, yeah, yeah...stop talking and get to the killer birds," but I was like 11 or 12. Subsequent (and more mature) viewings definitely reveal more and more depths to the characterizations and the relationships. Hedren and Tandy's eventual bonding moment is so graceful and understated in both writing and performance that it is kind of amazing that it exists in the same movie that also contains what I imagine must have been the goriest image to appear in a mainstream movie at that time.

Tetsuo 3 feels oddly unassured for Tsukamoto, especially for such a recent film, but there is good stuff in there. Tetsuo 2 was way way too long but 3 is very very short. I still think that part in 2 when the main character runs around the buildings is fantastic, one of my favourite Tsukamoto moments. But overall 2 and 3 don't stand very high in his filmography.
Fires On The Plain was going to be screened in my city but it was bloody cancelled.

Shozin Fukui made a comeback but his new stuff is probably a challenge to find.

I don't think there's a lot of Imamura in region 2. Might get more soon.

Pigs & Battleships & Stolen Desires
Insect Woman & Nishi-Ginza Station
Vengeance is Mine
Profound Desires of the Gods
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
A Man Vanishes
The Eel

are all still in print on Region 2 DVD/Blu

I wish Kei Fujiwara would start directing movies again. She did some of the camera work in Tetsuo, and I love her movie "Id". She runs a theatre troupe now.

Métamorphoses (2014, Honore) 6/10
Wrong Move (1975, Wenders) 5/10
Semi-Tough (1977, Ritchie) 6/10
Until the End of the World (1991/94, Wenders, director's cut) 6/10
My Uncle Antoine (1971, Jutra) 7/10
Lonely Are the Brave (1962, Miller) 7/10
*Pennies from Heaven (1981, Ross) 6/10
Eastern Boys (2013, Campillo) 7/10
Phoenix (2014, Petzold) 6/10
Tree of Knowledge (1981, Malmros) 7/10

bonfire of the vanities (90 depalma) 3/10
the brass teapot (2012 ramaa mosley) 5/10
*smooth talk ('85, joyce chopra) 8/10
la pointe-courte ('55, varda) 6/10
very good girls ('14, Naomi foner) 5/10
maps to the stars ('14 cronenberg) 7/10
citizenfour ('14 poitras) 7/10
cisco pike ('72, bill l Norton) 3/10
all this mayhem ('14, danny way) 9/10
whitey: usa v james bulger ('14, berlinger) 4/10
all fall down ('62, frankenheimer) 6/10