Last (x) movies you saw

Killing Ground (2016) 8/10
After the Storm (2016) 9/10
Umimachi Diary (aka Our Little Sister, 2014) 7.5/10
Bakuman (2015) 7/10
Ukigumo (Floating Clouds, 1954) 7/10
Kicking and Screaming (1995) 4/10

A lot of Japanese viewing, when I list it!

c'mon crypto, Sinatra was never better.

also it's NUTTIER on the page! read the novel.

Pretty sure it's the only Sinatra I've seen tbh. Unless his appearance on Who's the Boss counts (in which case, yes, this us better).

August:

Sovereign's Company (Clarke, 1970) 7/10
Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach (Osmond, 2016) 6/10
The Hallelujah Handshake (Clarke, 1970) 6/10
To Encourage the Others (Clarke, 1972) 8/10
Topaz (Hitchcock, 1969) 6/10
The Shadow of the Cat (Gilling, 1961) 6/10
Four of the Apocalypse (Fulci, 1975) 7/10
Under the Age (Clarke, 1972) 5/10
Horace (Clarke, 1972) 7/10
The Love Girl and the Innocent (Clarke, 1973) 7/10
A Follower for Emily (Clarke, 1974) 6/10
God Told Me To (Cohen, 1976) 8/10
The Childhood of a Leader (Corbet, 2015) 7/10
Diane (Clarke, 1975) 7/10
Funny Farm (Clarke, 1975) 6/10
The Insider (Mann, 1999) 6/10

Wow, that's a high grade for After the Storm, MatthewK. Can you say a bit more about it?

Watched ab it of Frank last night but didn't really get into it.
Obvioulsy the large artificial head looks like its lifted from Frank Sidebottom the Chris Sievey character from the 80s but that seems to be about as far as that goes.

THink I was in the middle of doing a number of other things or might have paid it more attention.

Innisfree (1990, Guerin) 7/10
Work in Progress (2001, Guerin) 8/10
Happy Hour (2015, Hamaguchi) 6/10
Hell or High Water (2016, Mackenzie) 8/10
*Rodrigo D: No Future (1990, Gaviria) 7/10
Bell, Book and Candle (1958, Quine) 6/10
The Fool Killer (1965, Gonzalez) 7/10
Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962, Zugsmith) 5/10
Theatre of Blood (1973, Hickox) 6/10
Hail, Caesar! (2016, Coen, Coen) 5/10
Little Men (2016, Sachs) 8/10
Ornette: Made in America (1985, Clarke) 7/10
The King of Texas (2008, Pinnell) 6/10
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974, Cimino) 7/10

Election (2016, Menon) 2/10

Equity, sorry. Election is a solid 8/10

Sinatra is first-rate in The Manchurian Candidate!

whereas I can barely watch Dr. Strangelove

Way way too low on Theatre of Blood, Morbs

i find even the high end of V Price camp comedy gets wearying after first 40 mins

also Robert Morley in pink suit is a bad fag joke

the best scene is when he beheads Arthur Lowe

Wow, that's a high grade for After the Storm, MatthewK. Can you say a bit more about it?

― Frederik B

Rosemary's Baby (Polanski, 1968)
Ornamental Hairpin (Shimizu, 1941)
Morning for the Osone Family (Kinoshita, 1946)
*The Limey (Soderbergh, 1999)
In Heaven There Is No Beer? (Blank, 1984)
Twenty-Four Eyes (Kinoshita, 1954)
What Is Cinema? (Workman, 2014)
The French Lieutenant's Woman (Reisz, 1981)

Man, Twenty-Four Eyes is an emotional shotgun. I found it too heavy-handedly elegiac, but I can see why it was so beloved in postwar Japan.

Re-watched The Lords of Salem last night. Not only is it Rob Zombie's best movie by about a hundred miles, it's also one of the best horror movies of the 21st Century.

Mia Madre (Moretti, 2016) 7/10
Little Men (Sachs, 2017) 8/10
The Childhood of a Leader (Corbet, 2016) 7/10
No Home Movie(Akerman, 2016) 9/10
Zootopia (Howard, Moore, 2016) 7/10
In Jackson Heights (Wiseman, 2015) 9/10
Opening Night (Cassavetes, 1977) 6/10
The American Friend (Wenders, 1977) 5/10
The Immortal Story (1968, Welles) 7/10
* Pierrot le Fou (Godard, 1965) 9/10
* Theodora Goes Wild (Boleslawski, 1936) 7/10
These Three (Wyler, 1936) 7/10

WilliamC: Any thoughts on Rosemary's Baby?

"heavy-handedly elegiac" is pretty apt, but it was still quite moving. I've seen Army, Osone Family and 24 Eyes in a fairly short window this summer and it's opened my eyes to Kinoshita in a new way. I'd seen four of his films before this, but only Carmen Comes Home stayed with me. (Phoenix, Onna and The Snow Flurry were the others.)

xps to MatthewK

I don't know Kinoshita's other work, sounds worthy of investigation. Naruse's Ukigumo (Floating Clouds) explores a similar postwar vibe but with quite different emphasis. Felt similar in tone though.

Clemenza -- I enjoyed Rosemary's Baby, but I can't help coming back to my initial reaction, which is that it was mostly hilarious. I don't know if that's just enjoyment of Ruth Gordon's character bleeding out into the rest of the film or what. Was it an ILXor, maybe Alfred, who pointed out how dyspeptic Cassavetes looked throughout?

Matthew, I highly recommend Army and Morning for the Osone Family to go with 24 Eyes as a WWII triptych.

Are we anticipating Hacksaw Ridge

(xposts) I thought the no-asterisk meant it was your first viewing of Rosemary's Baby...I think it's exceptionally funny, on top of 100 other kinds of brilliance--pretty much my favourite film alongside Nashville.

i have no doubt a pretentious semi-ass like Cassavetes thought he was making a drive-in potboiler

It was my first viewing! The gaps in my education show themselves occasionally.

Alfred, how does These Three work while burying the lez plot?

Barely! As usual it's Wyler's eye for performances that helps. The last half hour's a mess though.

a better bowdlerizing of the Hellmann play than The Children's Hour.

I enjoyed Rosemary's Baby, but I can't help coming back to my initial reaction

Okay, I misunderstood--thought this meant you'd seen it before. Initial = immediate.

yep

Miller's Crossing (1990; rewatch) 4/5
Weiner (2016) 3.5/5
The Knack... and How to Get It (1965) 3/5
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) 3.5/5
Anomalisa (2015) 4/5
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) 3.5/5
Appropriate Behavior (2014) 3.5/5

I re-watched Miller's Crossing this week, too. Easily my favorite Coen Brothers movie. Nothing else they've done even comes close for me.

what is yr fave Warner Brothers gangster movie?

the ruling class (medak 72, 6/10)
d'est (akerman 93, 8/10)
black narcissus (powell and pressburger 47, 8/10)* (rewatched)
the man who fell to earth (roeg 76, 8/10)*
pina (wenders 2011, 7/10)
river of grass (reichardt 94, 6/10)
duelle (rivette 76, 8/10)
noroît (rivette 76, 7??/10???)

Noroît is the kind of experimental film where both the stakes and the outcome are unclear, but many of its setpieces are stunning, especially the cascade of laughter and shrieks ("performed" and "sincere") during the pirates' amateur theatrical and the wild choreography of the concluding massacre at the masked ball. Duelle's premise is so strange that I was taken aback by how enveloping the film felt, film noir dissected into a series of dreamlike gestures.

I also kind of love how far Rivette was willing to go with camp aesthetics in these films, especially in the costume design; the later films of his I've seen seem somewhat more austere in this regard.

https://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/noroit1.jpg
https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/noroit42.jpg
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/duelleberto.jpg
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/duelle51.jpg

I also kind of love how far Rivette was willing to go with camp aesthetics in these films

It's definitely a theatrical aesthetic - the idea of 'dress-up' is important to lots of Rivette - or, "the romance of certain old clothes".

https://www.filmlinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/celineandjulie3-1600x900-c-default.jpg

As yr first still indicates (and it's great to finally have access to high quality images from these films), never undestimate the 'supernatural element' in Rivette either (alternative title for Celine and Julie - "Phantom Ladies over Paris", which is p much the plot of Duelle).

Rivette was supposedly a big reader of occult and supernatural literature. There's an interview on the dvd of "Story of Marie And Julien" where he spends a bit of time correcting the interviewer on the differences between ghosts and phantoms.

new hansen-løve/huppert film got me with deployment of the fleetwoods' unchained melody

Love and Mercy (Phlad, 2014) 6/10
Budawanny (Quinn, 1987) 7/10
The Childhood Of A Leader (Corbet, 2016) 6/10
Sing Street (Carney, 2016) 8/10
Close-Up (Kiarostami, 1990) 8/10

Close-Up = Sing Street? You are grounded, young man

Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans. My dad would have loved this. Me, I just wound up feeling sorry for Chad McQueen, who comes off like a pathetic sycophant crawling around in his daddy's shadow.

Close-Up = Sing Street? You are grounded, young man

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), 10 September 2016 00:54 (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cheers bruv

I'm always going to be a bit more lenient with the ratings when it comes to Irish films. Sing Street was way better than my expectations. The 50's Prom scene almost had me welling up and Jack Reynor is fantastic in it also. It reminded me a bit of "We are the best". Finding your identity through music and so on although Sing Street panders to its millennial audience a bit. Very much a 00's interpretation of 80's Ireland. Also no-one was talking about priests molesting children in Ireland 1985 and I'm pretty sure musos like Jack Reynor's character would have been championing The Smiths or The Alarm rather than Duran Duran

The Childhood Of A Leader (Corbet, 2016) 6/10

Not a success in toto but what an unusual subject for an American actor's directorial debut.

Tracing adult fascism to an indulged and unhappy childhood brought to mind Haneke's White Ribbon, which is much the better film - though I liked the way Corbet was humble (or confident) enough to step aside and let the amazing Scott Walker score do a lot of the work, particularly in the final ten minutes or so.

To the point that the film literally starts with the sound of the orchestra tuning up and the conductor's voice

Things to Come (Hansen-løve, 2016) - Loved how un-dramatic this was (2016 is a very undramatic, understated films). Awful things happen but Huppert simply keeps getting on with the business of life and work, and she is perfect playing that. There are some parallels to The Piano Teacher: the over-bearing mother (what got me thinking this was the mother's wish to move back in with her daughter "And where will you sleep?"), the precocious student, philosophy and classical music (with the former as something for the mind but having no actual effect on actions or anything much, and yet it forms a strong backdrop). Differences too (Haneke will always churn it out somewhere to get a reaction from you, Hansen-løve wants to simply put something we all immediately recognise on the screen and ponder on how bizarre it all still is), but very very good.

Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966) - Good to catch on a bigger screen.