Last (x) movies you saw

The Godfather movies are garbage.

I can understand "not my thing" or "overrated," maybe even "ponderous" or "self-important." (If I feign objectivity, I mean.) But not that.

i dunno, i love unreservedly Coppola's Dracula. yes it is cheesy but it's about fucking vampires. i love the 90s-ness of it all, the incredibly stacked and hammy cast. i love how it goes so OTT with the in-camera effects and visual flair. i saw Herzog's in the theater last year and while it was a great film i would rather watch Coppola's in a hearbeat. it's a riot.

Struck by Lightning (5.0)
Near Death (8.5)
Get Out (6.0)
Our Man Flint (5.0)
Fathom (5.5)
When Michael Calls (5.5)
Game Change (7.0)
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (7.5)
Downloaded (7.0)
David Lynch: The Art Life (7.0)

The Lynch rating is provisional. I drifted off for as much as 15-20 minutes--the stuff right before his move to Philadelphia--and it's only a 90 minute film. (Saw it with two friends who are also both over 50; I think we fell asleep in shifts.) It was just a late weeknight screening--the film's very unusual, and I'd like to see it again when it plays closer to home. Lynch's art work, which I'd never seen before, is wild; they end the film at exactly the right moment.

Chaplin shorts:
— Shanghaied (1915)
— The Vagabond (1916)
— One A.M. (1916)
— The Count (1916)
— Easy Street (1917)
The Handmaiden (Park, 2016)
Hour of the Wolf (Bergman, 1968)
À Propos de Nice (short – Vigo, 1930)
2 Days in Paris (Delpy, 2007)
A Taxing Woman (Itami, 1987)
I Am Not Your Negro (Peck, 2016)
Dodsworth (Wyler, 1936)

*Stormy Weather (1943, Stone) 8/10
Illusions (1982, Dash) (34m) 7/10
*Seven Days in May (1964, Frankenheimer) 8/10
Sully (2016, Eastwood) 7/10
Bush Mama (1979, Gerima) 6/10
Graduation (2016, Mungiu) 7/10
*High School (1968, Wiseman) 8/10
Ecstasy (1933, Machatý) 6/10
*Everybody Wants Some!! (2016, Linklater) 7/10
Model (1980, Wiseman) 8/10
*Law and Order (1969, Wiseman) 10/10
The White Disease (1937, Haas) 7/10
*Paterson (2016, Jarmusch) 8/10
The Lost City of Z (2016, Gray) 8/10

Of Freaks And Men

Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016) 8/10
*Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954) 10/10
Arrival (Villeneuve, 2016) 8/10
*Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, 1970) 8/10
*O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Coen, 2000) 9/10
Gun Crazy (Lewis, 1950) 6/10
*Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957) 9/10

April:

What's Up, Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972) 8/10
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940) 6/10
One Million Years B.C. (Chaffey, 1966) 7/10
Malina (Schroeter, 1991) 8/10
Thief (Mann, 1981) 8/10
Palms (Aristakisyan, 1993) 9/10
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Gunn, 2017) 6/10
The In-Laws (Hiller, 1979) 7/10
The Perverse Countess (Franco, 1973) 7/10

Malina (Schroeter, 1991) 8/10

So good, especially if you've spent time reading Bachmann/know about her.

Schroeter's early films are amazing as well - not sure how available they are.

Choices: The Movie (Green, 2001) 6/10
A Quiet Passion (Davies, 2016) 8/10
Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, 1970) 8/10
Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979) 10/10
Messidor (Tanner, 1979) 7/10
A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (Iwai, 2016) 9/10
Something Wild (Demme, 1986) 7/10

Was really blown away by Rip Van Winkle, has anyone else seen it?

So good, especially if you've spent time reading Bachmann/know about her.

I don't know the novel it's based on, and this was the first Schroeter I'd seen, so I guess I was viewing the whole thing through a Jelinek filter (having not long ago read Wonderful, Wonderful Times, especially.) The savagery, the contempt for Nazis/Daddies, the repetition of actions (all that throwing and smashing and smoking) felt familiar. Would definitely like to see more Schroeter, read some Bachmann.

I like how cryptosicko paired four road movies with Rear Window, tied with Jeanne Dielman for the worst road movie ever.

20th Century Women (Mills 2016) 5 - weak structure made it feel like an unending slog.
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) 7
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962)* 9
Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich, 1964) 6
Maudie (2016) 4

Ward - Yeah Jelinek is a big fan of Bachmann although their fiction is quite different (Jelinek has a more confrontation approach). There is a really good collection called Three Paths to the Lake. Really love Malina the novel. Her poetry seems worth it from what I've read in the Faber Book of 20th Century German Poems (I believe she made her name as a poet first).

was enjoying Silk Stockings this morning but goddamn was Astaire too old to be playing that role, adds an unnecessary skeeziness to the whole thing

Burden, a documentary about Chris Burden. The surveillance-video-quality footage of his 1970s pieces are what most people are probably gonna come to this for, and yeah, you get to see him get shot, but some of the other pieces are even more amazing. ("Beam Drop"!) I've been obsessed with a sculpture of his, Medusa's Head, since seeing a photo of it in ArtForum in 1990, and seeing it again here it's even more impressive.

The Invitation (Kusama, 2015)
Get Out (Peele, 2017)
*The Fifth Element (Besson, 1997)
Citizen Dog (Sasanatieng, 2004)
Rhinoceros (O'Horgan, 1974)
The Taste of Tea (Ishii, 2004)
Rhinoceros (Lenica, 1964)
On the Silver Globe (Zulawski, 1988)

The new restoration of On the Silver Globe is mandatory viewing IMO. I'm glad I held out and didn't pick up the notoriously bad DVD transfer or anything in the interim- this movie is one of the most eerily beautiful things I've ever seen. From what I understand, most of its bizarre color palette comes from meddling with camera lenses, not Soviet film stock, but the effect is similar to Stalker; the pace and tone are nothing like it, of course, since it's a Zulawski joint. Also worth comparing to Aleksei German's Hard to Be a God- not as filthy, not as Bosch/Brueghel-y, not as drably hopeless but doing very similar work based on (what I understand to be) somewhat similar novels. It's a shame Jerzy Zulawski's books aren't available in translation, nor likely to be anytime soon.

I probably have the bad old transfer.

Carmelo Bene's Salome. My copy didn't have subtitles. Lots of characters ranting at each other, constant fast cutting and bright colours like a psychedelic music video, bare buttocks and gluttony. There's some incongruous elements like an old man in t-shirt/shorts and a pop song. I wasn't that into it but it's pretty visually impressive at times, I haven't seen much like it. Wonder how it would look remastered.

Free Fire - 4/10
The Circle - 3/10
Their Finest - 4/10
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) - 10/10
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) - 10/10
Lemon - 2/10
Roar (1981) - 6/10
Golden Exits - 8/10
Sylvio - 4/10
Vagabond (1985) - 8/10
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - 7/10

hesher (2011 spencer susser) 6/10
lion (2016 garth davis) 7/10
coma (1978 Crichton) 6/10
20 years of madness (2015 Jeremy Royce) 7/10
rules don't apply (2016 beatty) 6/10
the lost city of z (2017 gray) 5/10
little otik (2000 svankmajer) 8/10
born to be blue (2015 Robert budreau) 5/10
win it all (2017 swanberg) 7/10

Little Otik is so great.

Problem Child (1990)

picked up VHS of "Problem Child" for a buck at Goodwill yesterday and watched that. my mom took me and my brothers to see this when we were kids. lol 90s child anarchy very much in the way of Home Alone or Dennis the Menace or Bart Simpsons but released before any of them and the best at making good on its Juvenile Delinquients b-movie exploitation roots. as a baby Jr. is seen smashing the window of his orphanage with a toy. later Jr. is accused of being Satan by all the nuns who are driven insane and managed by an exasperated Gilbert Gottfried who pawns him off to a pair of unsuspecting yuppies looking to adopt. Jr. being a demonic being is a big go-to gag in this, and we see John Ritter switching out his usual parental guidance bedtime reading material for The Exorcist. the carnage is glorious and cartoony. in once scene Jr. is wearing a full devil costume and using his pitchfork to pop balloons at some snotty girl's birthday party (during an awesome birthday destruction montage set to Leslie Gore's "It's My Party"). the mother is portrayed as a vapid materialist only interested in the kid for social gain, she is introduced insisting that "Donald" is what they should name their potential kid because it means success and money. the father is a saintly John Ritter who means well and loves Jr. unconditionally and whose life is utterly destroyed by this kid in a matter of weeks. just when things are looking dim, the family is introduced to Jr.'s idol, the mass murderer Beck (Michael Richards) who just broke out of prison and who he has been pen pals with for years.

i gotta say this movie was fantastic on re-watch and i honestly want to see it again someday. it was a really good script, things were set up and paid off later. some of the character were pretty 2D (the mom being literally discarded from the film) but it's essentially a living cartoon cool visual motifs, good pratfalls & practical effects, and funny putdowns of complicit and selfish authoritarian figures. it also has some kind of a heart to it, and seeing Ritter decide to give Jr. another shot was really cool, and had some nice reasoning to it. plus there is a car chase scene where John Ritter is standing on a car and shooting at Kramer with a shotgun while Iggy Pop is on the soundtrack.

I've never seen this film (didn't appeal to me even at 11, though Home Alone did, so idk) but I highly recommend tracking down the episode of Gilbert Gottfried's podcast in which the writers of the film are guests. The origin story behind the movie, and the way the writers approached the demand for a sequel, are great behind the scenes stuff.

I caught part of Problem Child 2 (I think?) on TV a few years ago and was kind of shocked at how grotesque and fucked up and nightmarish it was. I don't think I'd let my theoretical kid watch it.

I know I saw Problem Child in the theater as a kid but can only think of De Niro watching it in Cape Fear & laughing maniacally.

10 Cloverfield Lane (Trachtenberg 2016)
Urgh! A Music War (Burbidge 1982)
The Elephant God (Ray, 1979)
Locked-In Syndrome (short - Beineix, 1997)
Alps (Lanthimos, 2011)
Lone Wolf & Cub: Baby Cart in Peril (Saito, 1972)
Wrong Move (Wenders, 1975)
J.M. Mondesir (short - Colomer-Kang, 2012)
The Hare and the Tortoise (Yamamoto, 1924)
Antichrist (Von Trier, 2009)
*Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio, 1982)
Powaqqatsi (Reggio, 1988)
Naqoyqatsi (Reggio, 2002)

The 1924 "Hare & Tortoise" was from the site written about here:
https://hyperallergic.com/369024/a-trove-of-early-japanese-animated-films-is-now-online/

Did you watch Urgh! on the Warner's burn on demand dvd? I was wondering what the quality of that was like. I have a copy on beta but I haven't tripped across a working player yet.

No, I went a-torrenting. (It took a week to DL.)

The Outfit (1973, Flynn) 7/10
The Hot Rock (1972, Yates) 7/10
Outside the Law (1930, Browning) 5/10
*Mildred Pierce (1945, Curtiz) 8/10
Destination Unknown (1933, Garnett) 4/10
*Something Wild (1986, Demme) 8/10
*Melvin and Howard (1980, Demme) 10/10
Sensation Seekers (1927, Weber) 7/10
*Picture Snatcher (1933, Bacon) 8/10
Blue Sky (1994, Richardson) 4/10
Q (1982, Cohen) 6/10
*Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974, Scorsese) 8/10
The Fits (2015, Holmer) 7/10
The Seduction of Mimi (1972, Wertmuller) 6/10
In the Heat of the Sun (1994, Jiang Wen) 9/10
Black Snow (1990, Xie Fei) 7/10
The End of the Tour (2015, Ponsoldt) 6/10
*The Day of the Locust (1975, Schlesinger) 9/10

The end scene of "The Day of the Locust" freaked the shit out of me when I saw it on TV as a kid

The Day of the Locust (1975, Schlesinger) 9/10

damn

35mm at the NYC Quad

Karen Black partic outstanding, also Burgess Meredith as her vaudevillian/salesman dad

Lady Snowblood (Fujita, 1973) 8/10
Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengence (Fujita, 1974) 7/10
Don't Breathe (Alvarez, 2016) 8/10
The Front Page (Milestone, 1931) 7/10
Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972) 8/10
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (Post, 1970) 5/10
Escape From the Planet of the Apes (Taylor, 1971) 6/10
The Mouse That Roared (Arnold, 1959) 6/10
Lost in France (McCann, 2016) 7/10
Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 (Gunn, 2017) 7/10
Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) 7/10

rw:
His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940) 7/10
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016) 4/10
The Three Musketeers (Lester, 1973) 6/10
Se7en (Fincher, 1995) 8/10
Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001) 10/10

Some movies I've watched this week.

Branded to Kill (Suzuki, 1967) 7/10
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Fincher, 2011) 6/10
The Searchers (Ford, 1956) 5/10
Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984) 9/10
Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958) 8/10
M (Lang, 1931) 9/10
L’Avventura (Antonioni, 1960) 8/10
La Strada (Fellini, 1954) 7/10
Wendy and Lucy (Reichardt, 2008) 9/10
Barton Fink (Coens, 1991) 7/10
Miller’s Crossing (Coens, 1990) 9/10
Blood Simple (Coens, 1984) 6/10
True Grit (Coens, 2010) 6/10
Raising Arizona (Coens, 1987) 8/10
O Brother, Where Art Thou (Coens, 2000) 4/10

O Brother, Where Art Thou (Coens, 2000) 4/10 ?!

less than zero (1987) 6/10
win it all (2017) 7/10
tower (2016) 7/10
get out (2017) 7/10
*cliffhanger (1993) 6/10
king cobra (2016) 6/10
rashomon (1950) 8/10
*dig! (2004) 8/10
the skeleton twins (2014) 6/10
the place beyond the pines (2012) 7/10
andrei rublev (1966) 9/10
get me peter stone (2017) 7/10
bad company (1972) 7/10
eyes without a face (1960) 8/10

idk none of the jokes landed and I was expecting it to be messy but not incoherent.

The Secret Trials of Henry Kissinger (7.0)
The Unknown Known (7.0)
Long Strange Trip (6.5)
Shadowman (7.0)
The Fog of War (7.5)
Nobody Speak: Hulk Hogan, Gawker and Trials of a Free Press (6.5)
Freeway (5.5)
City by the Sea (5.5)
Stoszek (8.0)
Hick (6.0)
The Executioner's Song (6.5)
O.J. Simpson: Made in America (8.5)

The version of The Executioner's Song I watched ran 2:15--supposedly the director's cut, but I know there are longer versions out there.

Chungking Express (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994)
*Man With a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929)
Butter Lamp (short - Hu Wei, 2013)
Carol (Haynes, 2015)
*Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997)
Next Floor (short - Villeneuve, 2008)
Borom Sarret (short - Sembene, 1963)
Lone Wolf & Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons (Misumi, 1973)
Lone Wolf & Cub: White Heaven in Hell (Kuroda, 1974)
All These Women (Bergman, 1964)
Lola (Fassbinder, 1981)

Not as much as I'd like in the job-hunting post-graduation lull.

N. Took the Dice (Robbe-Grillet, 1971)- the reworked (well, kind of) version of his Eden and After; a close watch to finish off a long-overdue seminar paper

The Tales of Hoffmann (Powell and Pressburger)- LOVED THIS CRAZY SHIT. I've wanted to watch it since I was a teenager and saw it in a Criterion catalog, but since then it's been hard to find, all while Angela Carter and Freud/Jentsch fired up my interest in actually seeing it. The lead was massively unappealing (especially with his horrible little beard in the Venice section) but everything else was brilliant. And it's super-obvious but I had such a fun little spark of recognition seeing how much the Olympia section influenced Blade Runner- aside from the whole artificial-human thing, the Chew character in the film has no real function other than as a tribute to Hoffmann's Coppelius, the all-gold Tyrell pyramid is like Spalanzani's parlor, and J.F. Sebastian's little toy soldiers are so obviously modeled on the miniature Kleinzach from the wraparound tavern segment.

*Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Lynch, 1992)- rewatched this for the first time in years, and the first time since sitting down to do a full run through of Season 2 rather than ancient memories of seeing the last few episodes on VHS and quitting subsequent rewatches as soon as James starts to have his unwatchable subplot. Tremendously upsetting & brilliant.

*Alien (Scott, 1979)- It's Alien, it's good

*Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)- The new theatrical restoration prior to Criterion's rerelease. I have to confess I started to drift off in the opening pre-Zone segment of the film and had to literally slap myself awake; it's a failing of mine with slow/meditative movies (others have included Nostalghia, the opening sections of Vertigo, In the Mood for Love and Hard to Be a God) if I'm at all sleep-deprived. I haven't seen Stalker since 2002 in Chicago's Siskel Center, and it's just as wondrous as I remembered. I can't compare with its previous state, obviously, but the restoration is gorgeous, especially the first transition from the sepia/amber-tinted outside world to full natural color in the Zone.

*Aliens (Cameron, 1986)- It's Aliens, it's not as good. Though googling "Arcturian poontang" led to the disappointing discovery that comic writers and the like have decided Arcturians are a sentient alien species, which seems massively out of place in this setting, and the happy discovery that someone- Dan O'Bannon, Scott, Cameron, Walter Hill, who knows- intended the original's Dallas and Lambert to be trans, and Lambert's mtf status is visible in the boardroom scene of Aliens if you're quick with the pause button.

*Alien 3 (Fincher, 1992)- I will still stick up for this, logical lapses, poor puppet work and compositing and all. I'm going to watch the alternate versions of the older films after I head out to see Covenant- partly as a cooldown from what I'm sure will make me angry in some way, even if I enjoy the visual design or the Fassbender camp or the gore or whatever- but partly because I can't wait to watch the workprint version.

Hopefully today I'll be able to grit my teeth and push through Alien Resurrection and then something I haven't seen and might actually enjoy

Finished with the Fassbinder season at the BFI:

Lola (1981)
Lili Marleen (1981)
In a Year of Thirteen Moons (1978)
Statiomaster's Wife (1977)
Fear of Fear (1975)

Lady MacBeth (William Oldroyd, 2017) - Had a great look to it. I don't think anything was added by adaptation.
Suntan (Papadimitropoulos, 2017) - a ruthless film and very well put together. Top 10 easy.

OJ: Made in America (2016) 8/10
*the three amigos (1986) 7/10
fresh (1994) 7/10
olive kitteridge (2014) 8/10
the red pill (2016) 6/10
diane (1975) 7/10

Watched Logan last night. It would have been better if it was 45 minutes shorter, if there were some actual villains instead of a squad of Keystone Kops mercenaries, and if the little girl had never spoken at all, or had spoken exclusively in un-subtitled Spanish. Other than that, it mostly just reminded me that I'm better off avoiding superhero culture entirely.

The Ten Commandments (1956) - a masterpiece. lots of low key humor and big performances.
Pirates of the Carribean Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) - saw this at the drive in last night. decent fun. unfortunately 1/5th of the movie was too dark to see.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (2017) - also at the drive in last night. fucking awesome. this is how you make a movie with characters with motivations you can actually comprehend.
The Masque of the Red Death (1964) - looks wonderful, mid-60s mod lighting and colorful goth psychedelia wrapped in satanic panic nonsense. vincent price and jane asher.
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971) - promising proto-horror that goes overboard with the twists to the point where nothing makes sense and not in a wow-this-is-crazy way but the boring way.
Solarbabies (1986) - laughable title, low budget mad max rip off with some cool effects sequences. amazed this was shot in location in Spain and not in a deserted tire factory outside LA but maybe it was cheaper.
Mac and Me (1988) - reminded me a lot of The Man Who Fell to Earth. weird aliens that look like nightmarish living Sea Monkeys. the product placement surprisingly only really in one scene (in which a McDonalds turns into an impromptu 80s dance party) that is so OTT its kind of interesting

Not a very good list:

Cage of Gold (1950) Saw this after my boyfriend requested a film "like the scene in Rebecca where they go to the doctor in Shephards Bush." Full of amazing photography, shots of Albert Bridge by night. Annoying protagonist and by-numbers plot, but interestingly about the post-war consensus, the NHS, community v individuality.

Mildred Pierce (1945) Hadn't seen this since I was a child. Deeply odd for such a classic, a mix of noir and woman's picture. Incredible Joan Crawford double-slap. Lovely interiors, I kept wanting to pause it to have a good look at the beach house.

Carrie (1976) Obviously seen a million times before. Really struck me how slim the plot is on this occasion. Like half of the film is the prom scene, but in my memory that is right at the end. The soundtrack going "they're all gonna laugh at you" makes me ill

Polyester (1981) Much better than Far From Heaven.

Frauen in New York (1977) Kept falling asleep and felt like I was having an insane nightmare. Most striking example of that Fassbinder thing where you can hear all the costumes rustling and the sets squeaking. Each scene was filmed on the same set, dressed slightly differently, so that although the scene locations kept changing, you could hear the same floorboard creak whenever someone walked on it.

The Gay Divorcee (1934) I prefer Swing Time. I was amazed at how risque this was. That English Guy who shows up in a few Fred and Ginger films is most annoying in this one. Still better than most other films on the list.

Serial Mom (1994) Very funny, I watched it again the next day.

32 Short Films about Glenn Gould (1993) Interesting enough biopic. Very good central performance. You spend a lot of mental energy trying to recall specific passages of music.

La Vraie Nature de Bernadette (1972) Amazing French-Canadian Fellini film about agricultural subsidies. Hypnotically ugly clothes.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) My boyfriend had never seen this. Impossible to say anything new about this film, but how horribly beautiful. Afterwards I was completely depressed for days. It's practically a snuff film.

Just finished watching "Get Out". I really enjoyed it as a dark comedy. But as a horror-qua-horror movie it's just aight. Was expecting a more intense experience. Big fan of Jordan Peel, looking forward to what he does next.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
PG 1988

this was incredible. amazing cast. lots of Pythons and folks from Time Bandits and the like. the deification of Uma Thurman. the effects were utterly beautiful and proto-Tonight Tonight steampunk. also a superhero team origin story! very wonderful and dreamlike.

Robin Williams as a the King of the Moon (with detachable flying head, natch) was a riot. i love the scenes where they are climbing down from the crescent moon and navigating neon vector renderings of Enlightenment-era cosmological charts and maps.