Last (x) movies you saw

NO, StillAdvance, you're thinking of the James Bond films that ripped it off for 50 years.

here: http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/north-by-northwest

i had a lot of fun watching it (i went to an OAP screening so was surrounded by 100s of excited pensioners). but i was struck that if that film were made today, it would prob... well i dont need to finish that sentence. but idk, when i think of hitchcock's greatest, i dont really think of northwest. but maybe im selling it short. its a great example of what hollywood does/did brilliantly. pure, frothy entertainment.

actually one of the weird things i noticed while watching it was how his 'gentlemanly innocence' is celebrated, or seen as a virtue. today, that would be a source of endless mockery.

Pretty strong froth tho, and best-remembered bits mock "strong" too, like Cary Grant starts strutting around like Popeye, and talking outta the side of his mouth, and clambering all over the mighty Rushmore headz of dead Prezez. But also, the ambush by the plane, in the middle of nowhere---what's he doing there, anyway? Is it a nightmare? No explanation that I recall. Lodged in the mind as a great set piece, and suspect it would even if (as may be) it's presented as plausible in context of thriller chess game. Who cares: awesome sauce.

i need to see more Eva Marie Saint films

O hell yes. Was gonna add: Social and psychological commentary, even attitude (mocking "strong," for inst) are just some of the ingredients (along means to the ends---even characters can be macguffins---for this creative showman and dealer in visual marvels.

aborted paren was going to mention visual marvels there

"No explanation that I recall."

there is an explanation.

i need to see more Eva Marie Saint films

― StillAdvance,

she was only in a few good ones

Eva Marie is still with us at age 92, nearly, and her DVD supp interviews are always fun and smart

i mean it makes no sense but there is an explanation. the bad guys send him there to supposedly wait for the mythical secret agent. even though the bad guys think that HE is the mythical secret agent.

at least she wasn't in The Fury :)

xxp

i mean i kinda love that they could just kill him in chicago but send him out to the middle of nowhere for no reason. it's my kinda nonsensical.

"a libation!"

xxpost Of course, the visuals wouldn't work as well if he didn't tap into his own sense of and need for dread, or that's the way it comes across.

"Truth iz/Thuh pur-fect/Diz-guise."---Kristofferson

the lack of coherence is pretty WTF, but it gets away with it, for reasons i cant totally remember, or maybe because it seduces you into wanting to let it get away with it (or just cos its hitchcock, and we are meant to do this)

he called coherence expecters "the Plausibles"

Never knew that, but I can hear it: "The Plohh-zibuhlz"

Maybe it did come from a dream originally---reminds me, Francis Coppola told an interviewer that he sold some early movies that way---Dementia 13 came from that pond dive, then he figured out a story to put it in. And David Lynch would ask his friends, "What would you think if you saw this (scene, image, text and/or storyboard) in a movie?"

Entertainment (Alverson, 2015)
Glory (Zwick, 1989)
Mouchette (Bresson, 1967)
*Blow-Up (Antonioni, 1966)
Phoenix (Kinoshita, 1947)
Wings (Shepitko, 1966)
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Andersson, 2014)
Woman (Kinoshita, 1948)
Mysterious Skin (Araki, 2005)
The Snow Flurry (Kinoshita, 1959)
13 Assassins (Miike, 2010)

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (original--6.5)
Transcendence (5.0)
American Dreamer (6.5)
Casualties of War (10.0)
Sing Street (7.5)
Gone Girl (7.5)
The Secret Disco Revolution (5.5)
The Pulitzer at 100 (7.0)
Ginger in the Morning (3.0)
American Hustle (7.5)

Lots of great clips in The Secret Disco Revolution, but the narration and framing device are hopelessly awful.

weird batch here

nasty baby (silva 2015) 7/10
who took johnny (sukie hanley, Michael galinsky, david beilinson, 2014) 7/10
belladonna of sadness (eiichi samamoto '73) 9/10
the intruder (david bailey '99) 5/10
the grim reaper (bertolucci '62) 6/10
bus stop (josh logan '56) 6/10
break point (jay karas 2015) 8/10
camp xray (peter sattler 2014) 5/10
cheap thrills (e.l. katz 2013) 7/10
equinox flower (ozu '58) 8/10
gunshy (jeff celetano '98) 5/10
sleeping with other people (leslye headland 2015) 0/10
weapons (adam bhala lough '07) 6/10
girl on the motorcycle (Cardiff '68) 5/10

watched this a couple of days ago when i heard that he died. it's very cool! 8/10

r.i.p. peter hutton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVnMguuS3vM

Oh my god the Spanish film ma ma (Penelope Cruz gets magic cancer) is so excruciatingly terrible

Carol (Haynes, 2015) 5/10
*Secret Admirer (Greenwalt, 1985) 4/10
The American Friend (Wenders, 1977) 6/10
Billy Boy (Mizer, 1970) 6/10
Where to Invade Next (Moore, 2015) 5/10
*The Opposite of Sex (Roos, 1998) 8/10
X-Men: Apocalypse (Singer, 2016) 5/10
The New Girlfriend (Ozon, 2015) 7/10
*Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 1950) 9/10

Oh my god the Spanish film ma ma (Penelope Cruz gets magic cancer) is so excruciatingly terrible

I was minutes away from seeing this then checked the reviews, which are not generally the outright barometer for me, but you can't argue with like 20%. I love PC, but this looked woeful.

Symptoms (Larraz, 1974) 7/10
The Old Dark House (Castle, 1963) 5/10
Embrace of the Serpent (Guerra, 2015) 7/10
Rams (Hákonarson, 2015) 6/10
Tale of Tales (Garrone, 2015) 6/10
The Measure of a Man (Brizé, 2015) 8/10
Beat Girl (Gréville, 1960) 5/10
Last Train from Gun Hill (Sturges, 1959) 7/10

Central Intelligence 8/10
Our Kind of Traitor 6/10
Swiss Army Man 7/10

No Home Movie (Akerman, 2015) - film of the year.
Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1972) - first time watching on the big screen where the framing of the camera is matched by distanced, cold, hateful gaze. More mirrowing -- a chill to see the racial hatred, talk of immigrants and 'all their rapes' from the mouths of the characters being aped by politicians today. Hits home.

*Jodorowsky's Dune
Lemonade
Tickled
The Last Detail
*Harold and Maude
M. Hulot's Holiday
*The Stunt Man

Those last four with my parents visiting for the long weekend; surprisingly, all but The Stunt Man were hits.

No Home Movie (Akerman, 2015) - film of the year

I would agree; this was devastating, and would have been even if it weren't, sadly, a coda to Akerman's work. It makes me especially want to see Dis-moi which seems to prefigure it in a lot of ways. How many filmmakers can convey such powerful sadness and unease with long still shots of empty rooms?

Kid Blue (1973, Frawley) 6/10
Private Property (1960, Stevens) 7/10
Cry ‘Havoc’ (1943, Thorpe) 5/10
*All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, Milestone) 9/10
*Right Now, Wrong Then (2015, Hong) 7/10
Nuts! (2016, Lane) 6/10
Raising Cain (1992, De Palma) 6/10
*The American Friend (1977, Wenders) 9/10
The Witness (2015, Solomon) 6/10
*Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One (2015, Gomes) 7/10
*Last Night At The Alamo (1983, Pennell) 8/10

lord of the rings fellowship 9/10
LOTR two towers 7/10
LOTR return of the king 7/10
already tomorrow in hong kong 7/10
the chosen ones (2015) 6/10
the jungle book (2016) 4/10
to the wonder 10/10
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind 7/10
tree of life 8/10
in the mood for love 8/10
knight of cups 6/10

*Last Night At The Alamo (1983, Pennell) 8/10

YAY! There's a benefit screening of the restoration here on Thursday, but tickets are $40 (and up). So I'll hold onto my bootleg DVD and continue to cherish my memories of seeing The Whole Shootin' Match in 2008 w/a panel discussion between Sonny Davis, Lou Perryman (RIP), and Kim Henkel before a small audience consisting of myself, a few Rice film students, and Davis' assorted siblings and nieces and nephews.

new DVD obv coming

i also just got The Whole Shootin' Match outta the library

The Witch (2015) 3.5/5
Where is the Friend's Home? (1987) 5/5
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) 3/5
Hard to Be a God (2013) 2/5
Modern Romance (1981; rewatch) 4/5
Tokyo Tribe (2014) 3/5
L'intrus (2004) 4/5
OJ: Made in America (2016) 4.5/5
Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016) 3.5/5
Dressed to Kill (1980) 3/5
Alice in the Cities (1974) 3.5/5

The Nice Guys (2016) 5
Finding Dory (2016) 6

Masters of the Universe (1987) 1/10
Always (Spielberg) 4
Purple Rain (1984) 4
Godzilla (2014) 5
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me 5
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) 2
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) 2
Best Worst Movie 6
Troll 2 (1990) 1
The Best Years of Our Lives 4 finally bit this bullet after reading Five Came Back a few years ago
O.J.: Made in America (2016) 7
Old Yeller 4
Holy Motors 4

Well, at least I'm not the only one who doesn't dig The Best Years of Our Lives.

It's a fine movie with excellent use of deep focus. The quiet crumbling of the Loy-March marriage is well done.

most of it, it's obvious where it's going, and it's so slow. the dana andrews plot was a complete waste of time to me.

les demoiselles de rochefort (demy, 7/10)
sans soleil (marker, 10/10) (rewatched)
captain america: the first avenger (johnston, 6/10)
les rendez-vous d'anna (akerman, 8/10)
captain america: winter soldier (russo bros, 7/10)
x-men: days of future past (singer, 5/10)
night mail (watt and wright, 6/10)
one day pina asked... (akerman, 7/10)
the wicker man (hardy, 7/10)
chronicle of a summer (rouch and morin, 9/10)

xpost

It's been years since I've seen it, but I remember my main issue being the distasteful mining of March's alcoholism for LOLs. On Alfred's remark about the visuals, I cannot really comment as the one time I saw it was via a less than stellar print on syndicated commercial TV broadcast. That alone probably warrants a rewatch.

thirst (chan-wook park, 2009) 8/10
we need to talk about kevin (ramsay, 2011) 6/10
embrace of the serpent (guerra, 2015) 8/10
tin can man (kavanagh, 2007) 4/10
you can count on me (lonergan, 2000) 7/10

documentaries:

capitalism a love story (moore, 2009) 7/10
trophy kids (bell, 2013) 7/10
the decline of western civilisation (spheeris, 1981) 7/10
(dis)honesty: the truth about lies (melamede, 2015) 6/10

rewatches:

withnail & 1 (robinson, 1987) 10/10
the master (anderson, 2012) 7/10

*The Usual Suspects (Singer, 1995) 5/10

the only time i saw it the ending made me so angry i think i would have come on here and given it 1/10 had i been on ilx

it didn't age well that's for sure

the music is atrocious!!

lol! i don't remember much except wanting everyone involved thrown out of a window for the ending

i saw it like ten years ago. almost as much time has elapsed since i saw it than elapsed between its release and me seeing it. that is weird

anyway

Remainder 7.5/10
Smiley Face 7.5/10

Embrace of the Serpent (2015) 4/5
Blackhat (2015) 2.5/5
The Lobster (2015) 4/5