Last (x) movies you saw

Well, there are some nice clips in the H/T doc, and Hitchcock is often p amusing on the excerpts from the tapes. But the parade of talking heads are largely insufferable (dear old Marty partially excepted) and the critical insights on offerare pretty bog-standard - whatever you think of Zizek, there's far more provocative and interesting stuff about Hitchcock in his Pervert's Guide to Cinema series.

H/T might not end up being good, but I can't see it being uninteresting. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

i got the impression it adds very little if you've 1) read the book and 2) have been consuming Hitchcock analysis for years/decades

It turns out to be one of the worst films I've seen in a while.

Given that the two films it most focused on brutalised their lead actresses the lack of any women contributors was amazing. Also this was a kind of argument for film studies, or at least it would've been benefited from someone coming at this from film studies (Linda Ruth Williams, say) to talk about Hitch in more depth rather than David Fincher going on about how he lets it all hang out or whatever.

(btw was Wes Anderson included for his fkn jacket or what?)

In the end the bk - which I looked at a long time ago - seemed here pretty much a dead doc, mutual appreciation society. Like what did they get out of each other? Couldn't Truffaut take a more critical stance (yes Hitch would probably have cut him off but so fkn what?) And so if Truffaut takes a more improvisational approach wtf was he doing admiring this stuff.

Agree Hitch's voice and remarks were the best thing in it - but in Kent Jones' hands his films almost always look unwatchable to me (Vertigo aside which really does stand out). That's quite an achievement as I like Hitch a whole fucking lot. All the problems in his films are waved away.

Well, there are some nice clips in the H/T doc, and Hitchcock is often p amusing on the excerpts from the tapes. But the parade of talking heads are largely insufferable (dear old Marty partially excepted) and the critical insights on offerare pretty bog-standard

I had the same reaction last summer. Besides my knowing what these dull talking heads were gonna say, I couldn't stop thinking the idea about making a documentary about a book of interviews was bizarre.

Grandma (2015, Weitz) 6/10

Ha -- you liked this marginally more than I did.

Good actors; I think people over 50 can't help but be more receptive.

A critic friend wrote on Letterboxd "Lily Tomlin being an asshole to everyone and then apologizing is one plot point too many."

Brolin was marvelous, wasn't he? As fine as he was in the Blythe Danner flick last year.

you mean Sam Elliott

yeah sorry Elliott -- same impressive hair

an unforgivable confusion

45 Years (Haigh, 2015) 8/10
*The Walker (Schrader, 2007) 7/10
Carol (Haynes, 2015) 7/10
Brooklyn (Crowley, 2015) 6/10
*The Limey (Soderbergh, 1999) 7/10
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's 'Island of Dr. Moreau' (Gregory, 2014) 6/10
Force Majeure (Ostlund, 2014) 7/10

The Thing (2011) - 6/10. --- this was better than expected. Delivered some fun b-grade spooks and fwiw infinitely better than, say, "Prometheus"
Divertimento - 8/10 --- prefer "La Belle Noiseuse".
Chi-Raq -7/10
Derek And Clive Get The Horn - 8/10 -- you either love 'em or you don't. I do.
Bedazzled (1967) - 8/10

The Man Who Fell to Earth (6.5)
The Master (7.0)
Until the End of the World (6.5)
The Agony and the Ecstasy (5.5)
Wings of Desire (5.5)
Margin Call (7.0)
L’Avventura (ongoing project)
School of Rock (8.0)
Crazy About Tiffany’s (6.0)
It Follows (6.0)

Results (2015) 2.5/5
Gueros (2014) 4/5
Creed (2015) 4/5
Amour Fou (2014) 3.5/5
Jafar Panahi's Taxi (2015) 3/5
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015) 4/5
Sweetie (1989) 3.5/5
Hail, Caesar! (2016) 3.5/5
The Cult of JT Leroy (2014) 3/5
A Tale of Winter (1992) 4/5

The Agony and the Ecstasy (5.5)
Wings of Desire (5.5)

christ on a cracker

200 Motels (Zappa/Palmer, 1971)
The Revenant (Iñarritu, 2015)
Design for Living (Lubitsch, 1933)
Slow West (Maclean, 2015)
Wild Boys of the Road (Wellman, 1933)
The Outlaw (Hughes, 1943)
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (Tirola, 2015)
Red Desert (Antonioni, 1964)
Bon Voyage (Hitchcock, 1944)
The Nomi Song (Horn, 2004)
Le Million (Clair, 1931)

the candidate ('72 Ritchie) 6/10
mistress ('92 barry primus) 8/10
music box ('89 costa-gavras) 5/10
the new girlfriend ('15 ozon) 5/10
the african queen ('51 Huston) 8/10
summer of '42 ('71 mulligan) 8/10
running on empty ('88 lumet) 7/10
anomalisa ('15 kauffman & duke Johnson) 7/10
carol ('15 Haynes) 8/10
solitary man ('09 koppelman/david levien) 4/10

*Smorgasbord (1983, Lewis) 6/10
*That’s My Boy (1951, Walker) 6/10
Tu dors Nicole (2014, Lafleur) 6/10
Mantrap (1926, Fleming) 7/10
The Breaker (1974, Shields) 5/10
The Event (2015, Loznitsa) 8/10
*Breaker Morant (1980, Beresford) 7/10
Two Friends (2015, L Garrel) 3/10
Birthright (1939, Micheaux) 6/10
*The Bellboy (1960, Lewis) 8/10

Clara Bow!

none other

newly restored 35mm print too

Opening Night (Cassavetes, 1977) - I only wish I had seen this before watching Birdman. Gena Rowlands is simply terrific. 8/10
Saboteur (Hitchcock, 1942) - Some nice camerawork and what-have-you, but overall a relatively subpar 'wrong man' chase thriller from Hitchcock. 6/10
Hail, Caeser! (Coen Brothers, 2016) - A couple of weeks removed from seeing it, and this has left very little lasting impression. A muddle of vague ideas and weak jokes. 6/10
The Quatermass Xperiment (Guest, 1955) - The low-key eeriness and '50s Brit-cinema realism work well for the film, though you can see why a tetchy Nigel Kneale disowned it. Bluff American Brian Donlevy is horribly miscast as Professor Quatermass. 7/10
Cleopatra (DeMille, 1934) - Lavish but no-nonsense DeMille epic. A magnetic Claudette Colbert all cheekbones and self-possessed smirk. 7/10
Cleopatra (Gaskill, 1912) - Helen Gardner (producer, editor, costume designer, star,) all wild gesticulation and posing, epitomises everything that is unfairly associated with silent cinema acting. It's sometimes hard to judge films so ancient, but this is recognisably a shoddy vanity piece. 3/10
The Naked City (Dassin, 1948) - The script is corny, missing the usual hardbitten wit of noir, and the performances are variable, but it is of course a great New York movie. The beautiful photography showcases the tapestry of NYC in the '40s in the raw, "the buildings in their naked stone, the people, without make-up." 7/10
The Black Panther (Merrick, 1977) - Grim, bleak, spare, '70s true-crime Brit-thriller. Based on the robbery-and-murder spree of disgruntled ex-squaddie Donald Neilson that took place a few short years before the film, this briefly had elements of being a grotty, British First Blood or even Taxi Driver or something. Very little dialogue and also insight into the motives behind the crimes, but incredibly effective. Also a great time capsule of a rain-sodden mid-70s Midlands. 8/10

rewatches:

Under the Skin (Glazer, 2013) - 9/10
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976) - 10/10
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (Bahr, Coppola, Hikenlooper, 1991) - 8/10

Comment Ca Va (JLG, 1976)
JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December (er JLG, 1995)
Histoire(s) Du Cinema (JLG, 1988 - 1998)

Visit or Memories and Confessions (Manoel De Oliveira, 1982/2016) - one of the best films to be seen this year was actually made in 1982 and only released this year.

Goodbye, South, Goodbye (8/10) : seeing this projected on a big screen is something else
Evolution (Hadzihalilovic -- 6/10)

Hail, Caesar! (Coen Bros., 2016) 6/10
*Rumble Fish (Coppola, 1983) 8/10
*Sightseers (Wheatley, 2012) 7/10
Come and See (Klimov, 1985) 10/10
Year of The Dragon (Cimino, 1985) 6/10
*God Bless America (Goldthwait, 2011) 5/10
The Witch (Eggars, 2016) 7/10

documentaries

His & Hers (Wardrop, 2009) 6/10
Standard Operating Procedure (Morris, 2008) 8/10
Overnight (Smith/Montana, 2003) 7/10

The Big Short (6.5)
The Third Man (9.0)
Submarine (6.5)
Before Stonewall (7.5)
The Cool School (6.5)
Seconds (6.0)
Cemetery of Splendor (6.5)
Carlos (8.5)
Hail, Caesar! (5.5)
Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther (8.0)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, I'm trying.

Seconds (6.0)

this movie is incredible.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, I'm trying.

― clemenza, 25. marts 2016 15:34 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Did you remember to fall asleep?

I really, really tried to stay alert and mostly succeeded. I lost maybe five minutes. But that's me. I think I probably drifted off just long enough in Hail, Caesar! to miss Frances McDormand.

Syndromes and a Century did nothing for me, so I haven't bothered paying attention to him since.

I've seen three (not Tropical Malady), and I feel like they're films I should like (i.e., there's a rhythm and temperament shared by many films I love), that I want to like, but I'm coming up short. With two of them, including the new one, I loved the ending.

you need more than one, crypto

I loved Uncle Boonmee..., the pacing feels perfect for the film, to me.

Seconds (6.0)

this movie is incredible.

― i;m thinking about thos Beans (Michael B), Friday, March 25, 2016 2:36 PM (15 minutes ago)

Is this Seconds the '60s one w/ Rock Hudson? Because that movie really is incredible and deserves way more than a 6.

It obviously has a lot of admirers on ILX (cf. Frankenheimer thread). I found it interesting but overly flashy, and the bacchanal scene seemed to go on forever. It reminded me a bit of The Swimmer in some not-good ways.

When I saw Blissfully Yours it was just 2 hours about a middling picnic. It has beautiful light, but no. But I liked each one I saw more, until Uncle Boonmee completely stunned me. Along with Stray Dogs the best film I've seen from this decade. And now I'm a fan, I'll even defend stuff like Mysterious Object at Noon and Mekong Hotel. Yeah, at times his films are overlong and impossible to understand without having read up on either Thai history or some weird short he made that was showed once at a museum in Vienna, but the parts I love make it all worth it. The sequence from Cemetery of Splendour after they go to the cinema! With the colors changing! It has stuck with me since I saw it, and when I go to see again, I will stick through all the weird stuff in the beginning until that comes. So good!

Cemetery of Splendour is his best yet, or it's possible I've finally moved to his rhythm (I liked UB and TM).

Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong, 2016) 9/10
Mountains May Depart (Jia, 2016) 8/10
The Endless River (Hermanus, 2015) 6/10
Hard To Be a God (German, 2015) 8/10
Truman (Gay, 2015) 5/10
Absent (Berger, 2011) 5/10
24 City (Jia, 2008) 6/10
* La Cienaga (Marte, 2001) 7/10
* The Vanishing (Sluizer, 1988) 7/10
* The New Land (Troell, 1972) 9/10
A New Leaf (May, 1971) 7/10
* The Leopard (Visconti, 1963) 10/10

That reminds me, even if I found Everlasting Moments boring as hell, is there still a chance that I'll like The New Land (or The Emigrants)?

Hard To Be a God (German, 2015) 8/10

I really loved this but every time I see/hear the title I want to (and sometimes do) make a shit joke about it being a Kanye West biopic.

hahaha

That reminds me, even if I found Everlasting Moments boring as hell, is there still a chance that I'll like The New Land (or The Emigrants)?

― rhymes with "blondie blast" (cryptosicko),

A slim one. The New Land >> The Emigrants, although not buy much. Outside of Dovzhenko, I can't think of another filmmaker so quietly skilled at showing people's relation to the land, which is a stern mistress.

"people's relation to the land, which is a stern mistress" -- Isn't that a George Costanza quote?

when he played the skeevy lawyer in Pretty Woman

I was thinking of "The sea, she was angry that day..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u8KUgUqprw

Güeros (Palacios, 2014) 6/10
Bridge of Spies (Spielberg, 2015) 8/10
The Walk (Zemeckis, 2015) 5/10
Night of the Shooting Stars (Taviani and Taviani, 1982) 6/10
*The Kid (Chaplin, 1921) 8/10
*I Confess (Hitchcock, 1953) 8/10
Frozen River (Hunt, 2008) 7/10
Zero Dark Thirty (Bigelow, 2012) 4/10
The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Heller, 2015) 4/10
*Strange Brew (Moranis and Thomas, 1983) 7/10
The Graduate (Nichols, 1967) 6/10

*rewatches

boy that's a high score for I Confess

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

challopy scores all 'round