Last (x) movies you saw

My biggest problem with Now You See Me is that the twist ending made the movie worse and required a ton of setup.

It turns out that the magicians aren't modern Robin Hoods, it's all about Frank Grimes Jr getting revenge.("spoilers" i suppose)

Morbius, what did you think of Gone Girl? I've yet to see it, but read a variety of takes, incl the explosive denunciation by Mary Gaitskill (for once, loosing/dropping her cool).

a quick dump of the last couple months. *s are previously seen

Porco Rosso (Miyazaki)
Song of the Sea (Moore)
*Scanners (Cronenberg)
The Dead Zone (Cronenberg)
*Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma)
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (Oshima)
Make Mine Mink (Asher)
God Told Me To (Cohen)
*The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Richter)
*Cat Soup (Sato)
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (Burton)
The Horse Raised by Spheres (O'Reilly)
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Amirpour)
Frogs (McCowan)
*The Telephone Book (Lyon)
Friday the 13th (Cunningham)
Friday the 13th Part 2 (Miner)
Friday the 13th Part 3 (Miner)
Please Say Something (O'Reilly)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Zito)
The External World (O'Reilly)
A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Fulci)
The Captive (Laloux)
*The ABCs of Death (various)- shit sandwich, no better on a second viewing
Gandahar (Laloux)
Black Belly of the Tarantula (Cavara)
Pierrot le Fou (Godard)

Forgot, the first Friday the 13th was a rewatch. And technically I'd seen Pee-Wee, but as a very small child on VHS, so that hardly counts...

I don't know if this is commonly commented on but I noticed in A Matter Of Life And Death that among the statues of great historical people was Mohammed, but you only see the base of the statue.

Listen Up Phillip (Alex Ross Perry, 2014)
Nostalgia For The Light (Patricio Guzmán, 2011)
Happy People: A Year In The Taiga (Werner Herzog, 2013)

I watched these 3 throughout today with a huge hangover and was very happy. Had very low expectations for Listen Up Phillip but ended up loving it.

Close-Up (6.5)
While We’re Young (7.5)
Simone (5.0)
Wanda (7.0)
Night Moves (Kelly Reichardt--7.5)
The Last Detail (7.5)
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (7.0)
The Cult of J.T. Leroy (6.5)
Best of Enemies (8.5)
Deep Web (7.0)

Ex Machina - worth the ticket

I hoped that film would do well but it seems to have flopped.

It was #5 in per screen average

Aliens (1986)

I need to see the original soon, but this was a lot of fun. It's a James Cameron film so you know there will be cheesy rhyming 80s military banter and a sleazy greedy contractor who will sell out anyone on his one-way ticket to hell. It is crazy how much this movie influenced video games. I liked Bill Paxton losing his shit ("Game over man game over!") and Ripley telling him to man up because this little girl survived for a long time with no weapons on her own and she is infinitely more of a badass than this dramatic space marine. A little blunt with the parental/monsters-under-the-bed motifs but it is cool that Ripley somehow managed to find the one other person in the universe that survived these things and together they get through this mess. It kind of sucks that the only solution is to NUKE THE PLANET.

The Sin Of Harold Diddlebock ( 8/10 : i somehow overlooked this Sturges but wow what a surprise. Loved this.)
The Lady From Shanghai (9/10 : $9 Blu-Ray. A fantastic restoration. Beautiful and head spinning and fun as always.)

Human Highway (1982): I'm biased by Devo love and a chance to see Neil Young play with his model trains so of course I liked it. Really dug the elegiac hippie scene that interrupts the professional outsider art. Have a feeling that this movie is somehow responsible for Talking Heads' True Stories.

Big Eyes (2014): Hey, I wonder if that Feral House book on the Keanes is in the iTunes store? Oh cool, it is!

Starred Up (Mackenzie, 2013) 7/10
The Killers (Siodmak, 1946) 7/10
Ben-Hur (Wyler, 1959) 6/10
Viridiana (Bunuel, 1961) 8/10
*What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (Aldrich, 1962) 8/10
Beyond the Black Rainbow (Cosmatos, 2010) 5/10
Key Largo (Huston, 1948)
Birdman (Inarritu, 2014) 3/10
Love is Strange (Sachs, 2014) 7/10
Lilting (Khaou, 2014) 5/10
The Bridge on the River Kwai (Lean, 1957) 6/10
Fury (Lang, 1936) 4/10
Force Majeure (Ostlund, 2014)

oops....

Key Largo (Huston, 1948) 8/10

and oops again...

Force Majeure (Ostlund, 2014) 7/10

saw Selma & Inherent Vice on a flight, loved them both for very different reasons
Outcast of the Islands (1951 joseph conrad adaptation, very watchable, colonialism on full display, for a sense of what an amazing contrast / double feature this would make with 'Burn!' check out the 1952 nyt review - http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B05E6D7133BE23BBC4E52DFB3668389649EDE )
The Music Room (yep, beautiful)

2 DVD set of Watkin's Edvard Munch just arrived, that's next

While We're Young (Baumbach, 2014) 5/10
Force Majeure (Ostlund, 2014) 7/10
Dr Jekyll et les Femmes (Borowczyk, 1980) 8/10
Jauja (Alonso, 2014) 8/10
The Falling (Morley, 2014) 5/10

The Professionals (Brooks, 1966) 7/10
Fox and his Friends (Fassbinder, 1975) 8/10
Forty Guns (Fuller, 1957) 6/10
Hands of the Ripper (Sasdy, 1971) 6/10
Secret Agent (Hitchcock, 1936) 7/10
The Young One (Bunuel, 1960) 6/10
Aparajito (Ray, 1957) 7/10
Frozen River (Hunt, 2008) 6/10
Yella (Petzold, 2007) 7/10
Jour De Fete (Tati, 1949 - colour version) 6/10
The World of Apu (Ray, 1959) 9/10
The King of Escape (Guiraudie, 2009) 6/10
The Man From Laramie (Mann, 1955) 8/10
Saboteur (Hitchcock, 1942) 7/10

My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (Corfixen, 2015) 2/10
Mommy (Dolan, 2015) 6/10
[Removed Illegal Link] (Renoir, 1936) 9/10
* Metropolis (Lang, 1927) 9/10

aaaand

Clouds of Sils Maria (Assayas, 2015) 7/10

didnt the Nazis try to ban [Removed Illegal Link]?

Removed Illegal Link cld be the sequel to Boudou

Be Kind, Remove

isn't that what Goebbels said

*Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (Lumet, 2007) 9/10
Palindromes (Solondz, 2004) 7/10
It Might Get Loud (Guggenheim, 2009) 6/10
Dogtooth (Lanthimos, 2009) 8/10
Harakiri (Kobayashi, 1962) 9/10
Whiplash (Chazelle, 2014) 7/10
Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959) 7/10
American Reflexxx (Coates, 2015) 7/10
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Remy, 1962) 7/10

omg, YOU are the Devil for loving Lumet's dying fart

no way. great movie and PSH's best performance.

Pickpocket is my least favorite bresson so far, and I still think it's nonsense to give it less than 9. Or 90, if Whiplash is a 7.

pickpocket is fucking spectacular

Pick this man's brain!

The Homesman (Jones, 2014)
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi, 1953)
Sahara (Korda, 1943)
Sweet Movie (Makavejev, 1974)
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Amirpour, 2014)
Rancho Notorious (Lang, 1952)
Force Majeure (Ostlund, 2014)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon, 2015)

Pickpocket wasnt as good as A Man Escaped imo, which I gave a 9 to.

The last scene wasnt quite as ecstatic as we're all led to believe. Maybe its aspirations are bit too lofty. I dunno, it felt unearned. I loved the first scene at the racetrack though. Brilliantly done.

Amour Fou (Hausner, 2014)
Fruits of Paradise (Vera Chytilova, 1968)
The Last Day of Summer (Konwicki, 1958)
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson, 2014)

Hausner is the finest film of the year. Can't fault a scene. Andersson has two false scenes.

Chytilova is a total work, in a very 60s way. Konwicki's film (who died in January) is some sort of missing link in Euro film, a lot is said with little. I got the distinct feeling this is a small film to grow old with, one that will reveal an important answer to life itself.

Restraint (2008)

An Australian thriller starring Ragnar from Vikings and the romantic lead vampire from True Blood. Better than I expected.

Level Five (1997, Marker) 7/10
On War (2008, Bonello) 6/10
Like Father, Like Son (2013, Kore-eda) 6/10
L.A. Zombie (2010, LaBruce) 6/10
Young & Beautiful (2013, Ozon) 7/10
Strange Interlude (1932, Leonard) 5/10
The Royal Road (2015, Olson) 7/10
*Stray Dogs (2013, Tsai) 7/10
Journey to the West (2014, Tsai) 8/10
China Gate (1957, Fuller) 6/10
*No Skin Off My Ass (1991, LaBruce) 8/10
If I Were King (1938, Lloyd) 8/10
Strange Cargo (1940, Borzage) 6/10

selected shorts:
Robinet's White Suit (1911, Marcel Perez) 7/10
Smithy (1924, Jeske, Roach, Laurel) 8/10
Walker (2012, Tsai) 8/10

Far From the Madding Crowd (Vinterberg, 2015) - 8/10
Adieu au langage (Godard, 2014) - 7/10
Une femme mariée (Godard, 1964) - 7/10
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon, 2015) - 5/10
The Rover (Michod, 2014) - 2/10
Cas & Dylan (Jason Priestley, 2013) - 4/10
Fury (Ayer, 2014) - 4/10

rewatches:

Walkabout (Roeg, 1971) - 8/10
Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004) - 8/10
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Nimoy, 1983) - 6/10
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Nimoy, 1987) - 8/10
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Meyer, 1991) - 8/10

docs:
20,000 Days on Earth (Foresyth, Pollard, 2014) - 7/10
Misery Loves Comedy (Pollack, 2015) - 5/10
Cobain: Montage of Heck (Morgan, 2015) - 7/10

Wild (Vallee, 2014): sometimes tending to oversimplification of the memoir toward "life is a journey" deep thots, but that's counterbalanced by the knuckley details of dealing with the terrain (bringing visual impact not conveyed in the book) and with persistently invasive memories of what brought the protagonist to her 1000 mile hike on the Pacific Coast Trail---across the desert, the prairie, the foothills of the snowy Sierras, down to the woody meadows, trhough the indie boulevards of Ashland, OR (Jerry's dead! Tribute show tonight), thence through the rainforest.
Witherspoon is reflective, resourceful, at times totally straight ahead, occasionally falling apart, in flashbacks sometimes both at once, headlong: the best performance of hers I've seen. (She did a good indie movie about a hitchhiker early on, didn't she?) Laura Dern seems overenthusiastic. Doesn't help that she also seems about two feet taller than RW, writhing all over the place (I know she's supposed to be compensating, but jeez).

"1000 mile hike" if she did the whole thing, though I don't remember if she did; that's in the book, with a lot of stuff left out here (though there's as much as a 1' 55' movie could have, without getting clogged).

Also DVD extras involving the author, though I'll prob just watch the brief doc about the Pacific Coast Trail.

Pacific *Crest* Trail sorry!

Watching the doc now: actually it goes from Canada to Mexico, about 21/2 times her ideal distance. I'd like to go maybe 15 miles, over several days.

docette.

Over the Edge (1979) : Incredible performances, very-well made. It's like "Kids" but made 20 years earlier. Kurt Cobain's favorite movie. Some incredible landscape shots of 70s suburban wasteland. Only anarchist movie I've ever seen staring kids. Art school teacher rolling her eyes at the cops.
Die Hard (1988) : Classic classic classic. They don't make them like they used to. I like the hierarchy of law enforcement, from John McClane's lone wolf who doesn't play by the rules to Reginald VelJohnson as good guy cop who gets snubbed by ineffectual LAPD big brass, who in turn gets snubbed by equally ineffectual FBI ("My name is Agent Johnson, and this here is Agent Johnson, no relation.") The 80s was the high point of pulp and one-liners.
Why Don't You Play in Hell? (2013) : Japanese movie about a renegade film crew getting drafted by the yakuza to film an insanely bloody feud. Lots of fun!

Ex Machina (6/10)
A Tout Allure (6/10)
Jupiter Ascending (5/10)
Confucius (7/10)

watching Chow Yun Fat play Confucius is o_O

Drug War (To, 2013) 8/10
Bernie (Linklater, 2011) 6/10

White God (Mundruczó, 2015)
Hugely entertaining shaggy dog story about a dumped mixed breed dog called Hagen who becomes the leader of a dangerous anti-human dog militia on the streets of Budapest. The dog gangs running through the city scenes are rendered beautifully for such a low budget movie.
The Tribe (Slaboshpitsky, 2015)
A young pupil joins a boarding school for the deaf that is involved in organised crime and prostitution. There is no spoken dialogue, all interaction is in un-subtitled sign language. It is an unusual experience when the only audio track is footsteps, doors opening and shutting and people getting their heads bashed in.

No Regrets for Our Youth (Kurosawa, 1946)
Too Much Johnson (Welles, 1938)
Night Moves (Penn, 1975)
Samurai Rebellion (Kobayashi, 1967)
Le Silence de la Mer (Melville, 1949)
Voyage to Italy (Rossellini, 1954)
Journey Into Fear (Foster, 1943)
La Pointe Courte (Varda, 1956)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975)
Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015)