Last (x) movies you saw

Pan's Labyrinth. Not as much of a kid's movie as I had feared.

Zulawski seemed to really dislike Malick's work.

I've still never seen any Malick but I'll keep Tree Of Life in mind.

*Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
Sunday in Peking (short - Marker, 1956)
Buffalo Bill and the Indians (Altman, 1976)
Paterson (Jarmusch, 2016)
The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (short - Marker/Reichenbach, 1968)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (Watts, 2017)
The Ninth Configuration (Blatty, 1980)
Le Cercle Rouge (Melville, 1970)
Baby Driver (Wright, 2017)
and a couple of Stan Brakhage shorts and the prelude to Dog Star Man

I seem to really dislike Zulawski's work

ppl seem to be persistently confusing "insane" with "good"

Always need a follow-up for non-rating WC: what did you think of Buffalo Bill?

I've found most of Zulawski disappointing (even some that are considered his best) but that's only because he's so damn good some of the time.

I expected to love Buffalo Bill and did -- I think it's up there with his best 1970s work, which is saying a lot. Filmstruck added six Altmans a couple of weeks ago and that was the one I watched immediately. I don't know if I'll bother with The Delinquents (1957), but Secret Honor and Vincent and Theo are in my queue to watch.

I have been big Cannonball A fan for years William, but it was only recently I discovered the Cannibal (your last dn) origin of his stage-name!

(xpost) I liked it, not quite that much. Try to track down Nightmare in Chicago, a TV movie from '64.

Capricorn One (1978) was pretty good. a bit long, though just about every scene could have a few minutes cuts and the movie wouldn't lose anything. often it feels like the movie is just taking a 70s smoke break. still the premise was pretty cool, there is some good cinematography (lots of nice interiors of retro blinking lights consoles and giant video screens), and there are some good speeches and performances throughout. the story itself was really cool, it was fun to see where the movie was going to take us.

unfortunately the ending was botched in a really weird way. it's this great climax to the story but it keeps cutting between two groups, one them playing out in real time, one of them playing out in slow motion, the slow motion getting slower and slower until it is comically ticking by one frame at a time. then i cuts back to the reaction shot running in real time. then back to the awkward frame by frame slow motion. i thought something was wrong with the movie or something. was this on purpose? it freezes on a really dumb image and ends the movie. kind of feels rushed compared to the rest of it.

L'enfance Nue (Pialat) 9/10
Interstellar (Nolan) 6/10
The Dark Knight (ditto) 4/10 - still can't finish this slog of a film.
The Body (Battersby) 8/10

The Executioner (1963, Berlanga) 7/10
Café Society (2016, Allen) 5/10
A Master Builder (2013, Demme) 7/10
Film About a Woman Who… (1974, Rainer) 6/10
*Cemetery of Splendour (2015, Weerasethakul) 7/10
*Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984, Spielberg) 9/10
*Interiors (1978, Allen) 6/10
*Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970, Perry) (93m version) 8/10
The Middle of the World (1974, Tanner) 7/10
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014, Reeves) 7/10

Who's Crazy? (1966) - Only memorable for its score, improvised by the Ornette Coleman Trio while the movie was being screened for them. The film itself is infuriating hippie garbage; the director and all the actors should have been beaten by riot police.

1984 (1984) - An amusing trifle. John Hurt looks older than Richard Burton in it, and Burton died before it was released.

Picture Day (6.5)
Mon Oncle Antoine (8.0)
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (7.5)
Blume in Love (7.0)
Adrift in Manhattan (6.0)
Beatriz at Dinner (7.0)
Dawson City: Frozen Time (7.5)
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (8.0)
Rear Window (9.0)
Birth (6.5)

I don't really remember being aware of Birth when it came out (unless I just avoided it because I thought Sexy Beast so overrated). Not necessarily good--ultimately amounts to nothing--definitely weird. I think it's a prophecy of Trump--everything ever is about Trump. Guy shows up one day, says "I'm the president." Some people believe him, some don't.

La Maison Des Bois (TV series/Pialat) : 10/10
Report To The Commissioner: 6/10
Martin (Romero) : 7/10
Wandafuru Raifu (Koreeda) : 7/10

Blood for Dracula (1974; rewatch) 4/5
Blade (1998) 3.5/5
Stalker (1979; rewatch) 5/5
Dunkirk (2017) 3.5./5
30 for 30: Mike and the Mad Dog (2017) 2/5
City of Pirates (1984) 1.5/5
Decker: Port of Call: Hawaii (2015) 4/5

Watched Cronos last night. It was...OK. (I bought the Criterion box of 3 Del Toro movies, having only previously seen The Devil's Backbone.)

man.... A Ghost Story did not go over well at the packed elderly matinee... I liked it though, pretty soul crushing though, idk if I was in the mood for that.

Anthony Lane went on about it so long and well enough that I feel like I've already seen it, as tends to happen all over The New Yorker these days. Robert, Tree of Life is later-Malicky as Hell, and I dug it as such, but you really should (a word I try to use as little as possible), fucking should start with his early peak, Badlands, also Days of Heaven.

And speaking of early Altman, That Cold Day In The Park (1969) is one that seemed twitchy but/and deserving of more concentration (or maybe less would have helped more) than I could could contribute during a zoned midnight matinee long ago---what the heck, it's got Sandy Dennis, Luana Anders, Laszlo Kovacs...

the unofficial remake is Bruce LaBruce's No Skin Off My Ass

"The 'High Sign'" (Keaton and Cline, 1921) 6/10
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Waititi, 2016) 6/10
My Fair Lady (Cukor, 1964) 7/10
The Boss Baby (Tom McGrath, 2017) 2/10
"Listen to Britain" (Jennings, 1942) 5/10
Dunkirk (Nolan, 2017) 5/10 (in theatre, digital print) land 6/10, water 5/10, air 2/10

Slack Bay (Dumont, 2016)
Scarred Hearts (Radu Jude, 2016) - will be top 2/3 of the year, totally works for me.
Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman, 1961)

how does the Bergman hold up? I saw Shame again with trepidation but it impressed me.

Lego Batman - this was mostly trash, frenetic and stupid

Well it was the first time I saw it and I loved it very much. Its a great play, for one, then you have the scene on the ship and the helicopter at the end - both are inspired. xp

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Waititi, 2016) 6/10

― Einstein, Kazanga, Sitar (abanana), Sunday, 30 July 2017 13:56 (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Gtfo

Dawson City: Frozen Time (7.5)

I saw this last night and thought it was gorgeous.

lots of good moments in Wilderpeople, but ultimately in service of father-son bonding dreck.

risk (poitras 2017) 5/10
au revoir les enfants (malle, 87) 9/10
the house (Andrew jay cohen 2017) 5/10
remember my name (Rudolph 78) 6/10
a kind of loving (Schlesinger '62) 9/10
the discovery (McDowell 2017) 5/10
domestic violence (wiseman '01) 8/10
hidden in America (martin bell '96) 7/10
youth (sorrentino 2015) 6.5/10

Landline (Robespierre, 2017) 5/10
Dunkirk (Nolan, 2017) 6/10
* Pandora's Box (Pabst, 1928) 9/10

Soylent Green (1973)

Rewatching this was pretty good. Heston as a rogue PI in a dystopian future noir a la Blade Runner. The femme fatale gave off very strong Lana Del Rey.

http://i.imgur.com/jsNp6pV.jpg

soylent green u say

just be happy they moved on from their original prototype, Soylent Brown

*Dick (Fleming, 1999) 5/10
Fox and His Friends (Fassbinder, 1975) 8/10
Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969) 7/10
Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (Herzog, 2016) 7/10
I Am Not Your Negro (Peck, 2017) 7/10
My Life as a Zucchini (Barras, 2016) 6/10
For Your Eyes Only (Glen, 1981) 6/10
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (Hartley, 2015) 6/10
Octopussy (Glen, 1983) 4/10
The Salesman (Farhadi, 2016) 7/10
*Pinocchio (Sharpsteen and Luske, 1940) 10/10
Foreign Correspondent (Hitchcock, 1940) 7/10
The Big Sick (Showalter, 2017) 6/10

Nosferatu the Vampyre (Herzog, 1979) 8/10
Kedi (Torun, 2016) 7/10
Song to Song (Malick, 2017) 7/10
It Comes at Night (Schultz, 2017) 7/10
Hardcore (Schrader, 1979) 8/10
The Creeping Garden (Grabham, Sharp, 2014) 6/10
Pedestrian Subway (Kieślowski, 1974) 5/10
Dekalog 1 (Kieślowski, 1989) 7/10
Dekalog 2 (Kieślowski, 1989) 7/10
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Olmi, 1978) 10/10
The Beguiled (Coppola, 2017) 7/10
From Russia With Love (Young, 1963) 7/10
Goldfinger (Hamilton, 1964) 8/10
Dekalog 3 (Kieślowski, 1989) 8/10
Hounds of Love (Young, 2016) 6/10
Dekalog IV (Kieślowski, 1989) 7/10
Thunderball (Young, 1965) 5/10

Person to Person
Prevenge
CB4

*The Graduate (Nichols, 1967)
Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957)
Le Petit Soldat (Godard, 1963)
Welcome to the Dollhouse (Solondz, 1995)
Withnail and I (Robinson, 1987)
Medium Cool (Wexler, 1969)
David Lynch: The Art Life (Nguyen, Barnes, Neergaard-Holm, 2016)

Shorts:
Needle (Ghazvinizadeh, 2013)
Asparagus (Pitt, 1979)
Saute ma ville (Akerman, 1968)
Kitty (Sevigny, 2016)

Got a new Blu-Ray of John Frankenheimer's Ronin in today's mail. It looks fantastic, and it's one of my favorite movies anyway, so.
Just watched Jim Jarmusch's Paterson (free with Amazon Prime). William Jackson Harper, from the TV show The Good Place, is in it, and I spent every one of his scenes trying to place him.

Dark Circle (1982)
https://vimeo.com/24905300

amazing anti-nuke activist film. this was approved for airing PBS before being censored. a heavy focus on Rocky Flats and using newly released footage to show the horrors of the cold war era arms race. there is one bizarre experiment shown where they nuked a bunch of pigs to test the effects of a blast on human skin.

after the movie i went into a wiki rabbit hole reading about Rocky Flats. real fucked up. Dow Chemical and Rockwell pretty much got off scott free and fucked us over for thousands of years.

Razzia sur la Chnouf (Decoin, 1955)
Les Tontons Flingeurs (Lautner, 1963)

Break Up (Ferreri, 1965) - Saw a remaster of this without subtitles, looked beautiful.
Goodfellas (Scorcese, 1990) 7/10
The Blue Dahlia (Marshall, 1946) 6/10
Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983) 8/10
Faces (Cassavetes, 1968) 9/10
Night and the City (Dassin, 1950) 8/10
*The Killers (Siodmak, 1946) 9/10
The Big Heat (Lang, 1953) 8/10
The Big Steal (Siegel, 1949) 7/10

Le Trou (Becker, 1960) 9/10
Accident (Cheang, 2009) 8/10
Election (To, 2005) 9/10
Election 2 (To, 2006) 8/10
Fires on the Plain (Ichikawa, 1959) 9/10
I Love a Man in Uniform (Wellington, 1993) 6/10
The Human Factor (Preminger, 1979) 5/10
Insomnia (Skjoldbjærg, 1997) 8/10
Skip Tracer (Dalen, 1977) 7/10

Second batch of these watched because of All Units, a podcast about deconstructing thrillers that I would recommend.

I don't know where to put this, but I really want to tell someone this. Saw 'Mahana' this morning, the latest from Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors, um, Die Another Day). But the Maori wasn't subtitled, only the English parts. So sections of the movie was kinda unintelligible. Also, there was one time where a women said 'Akappa Ti, Poata', and I'm no expert on Te Reo, but I'm pretty sure it means 'A Cup of Tea, Mr Poata?'...

*Ordinary People (1980, Redford) 7/10
*Man of Iron (1981, Wajda) 6/10
To Encourage the Others (1972, TV, Clarke) 8/10
The Hallelujah Handshake (1970, TV, Clarke) 8/10
The Crazies (1973, Romero) 7/10
Sovereign’s Company (1970, TV, Clarke) 7/10
Columbus (2017, Kogonada) 7/10
Days of Eclipse (1988, Sokurov) 6/10
Loves of a Blonde (1965, Forman) 9/10
Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981, Bertolucci) 8/10
Algol: Tragedy of Power (1920, Werckmeister) 6/10
*Taxi Zum Klo (1980, Ripploh) 8/10
*Octopussy (1983, Glen) 6/10
Missile (1988, Wiseman) 8/10
Good Time (2017, Safdie, Safdie) 8/10

Sandra (Visconti, 1965)
The Death of Louis XIV (Serra, 2016)
After the Rehearsal (Bergman, 2017)
Chasing the Trane (John Scheinfeld, 2017) - its amazing how awful this was

Why? I agree it was on the generic side, and some of those cosmically swirly segues early on were corny, but (it's been a couple of months since I saw it) wasn't there enough Coltrane music to make it okay by default? I remember it as being pretty good on "Alabama" and A Love Supreme.

Yeah it was good on "Alabama". As someone who likes a lot of Coltrane's music there was very little content on what anyone said beyond "this is genuis", which isn't good if you don't buy it and would like an in (as the friend I was with did) or find him a complicated artist, and even if you like him AND buy it there is very little engagement on the music. A Love Supreme might be up there with Bach and Beethoven, but Coltrane broke up that group after recording it and started doing all the free/strange stuff - that is just the kind of thing that was in no way ever dealt with.

The other good-ish bit was the detour into Nagasaki, it was great to know more about that Japanese tour (Live in Japan 4CD set of recordings taken from it would be my go to Coltrane) but it was marred by that obsessive fanboy.

As for the footage I don't see much of a need to go to a doc for it. I mean I could just chase it up on youtube.

LOL sorry that Bergman is from 1984.

Again, going by a shaky memory, but I think I left wishing there'd been more live footage. Not sure how much exists--wasn't the documentary a lot of Ken Burns-like stills.

I found the Japanese guy kind of hilarious. A little less of him, probably.