Last (x) movies you saw

Except Dont Look Back and Women on the Verge..., yes. Having a ball

Alien (director's cut) - 9/10

i don't know what's different from the regular one, seemed like they showed the alien more idk

/Repulsion - 3/10/

Damn.

Psycho - 7/10

the Van Sant version?

nope, Hitchcock's. Unfortunately through cultural osmosis, the shower scene's impact & unusual structure that followed was totally blunted for me. The interminable expository monologue at the end by the attorney explaining Bates' condition was grating, but I understand that it was necessary for audiences in 1960. One thing that lost none of its power through cultural omnipresence was the incredible score.

Cat People and Blade Runner:TFC scores got reversed lol?

ha, no- i was not into Blade Runner at all, which was surprising... I'm a huge PKD fan, and while Do Androids... isn't one of my favorites, not even in my top 15, I thought I would like the movie for its Dickian atmosphere... I just didn't dig it at all, beyond a few perfect details (the pneumatic empathy machine in the beginning, the cityscape, the sound design), I thought it was tedious and surprisingly devoid of action...

Cat People was great, that one was a birthday present. maybe a 7 though. also lol don't know why i said 7 for Zelig, that shit was a 5 or 6

Alien (director's cut) - 9/10

i don't know what's different from the regular one, seemed like they showed the alien more idk

― brimstead, Wednesday, November 1, 2017 4:18 PM (forty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc the differences are they show the colony at the beginning and Newt's dad getting facehugged, there's the automatic guns set up to guard the tunnel, and there's more near the beginning w/Ripley getting acclimated to having returned (finding out her daughter has died and so on, etc...)

so, wait, you saw Aliens, not the first one.

Psycho is a whole different deal on a big theater screen btw, much more than many of his other films

hang on i never even realized there was an ALIEN director's cut

it was def the first one, there was no "game over, man"

Psycho is a whole different deal on a big theater screen btw, much more than many of his other films

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, November 1, 2017 1:11 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can see that - whenever a Hitchcock screens in town, I'm there, no matter how minor.

biggest difference with alien (singular) director's cut is that it has the cocoon scene. doesn't quite make sense in the place it's inserted into.

Insiang (Brocka, 1977)
Two in the Wave (Laurent, 2010)
*Head (Rafelson, 1968)
Teeth (short - Brown, Gray, 2015)
Tord and Tord (short - Von Bahr, 2010)
Gap-Toothed Women (short - Blank, 1987)
The Seventh Continent (Haneke, 1989)
Doodlebug (short - Nolan, 1997)
The Edge of the World (Powell, 1937) 9/10, amazing photography of the Hebrides
A Woman Is a Woman (Godard, 1961)
The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky, 1986)

The Old Dark House (Whale, 1932)
Variety (Dupont, 1925) **
*A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926) **
The Lost World (Hoyt, 1925) **
Strike (Eisenstein, 1925) **
*The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925)
How Stars Are Made (Blystone, 1916)
Her Anniversaries (Drew, 1917)
Rowdy Ann (Christie, 1919)
Her First Flame (Becker, 1920)
A Thrilling Romance (Robbins, 1926)
The Butcher Boy (Arbuckle, 1917)
The Rough House (Arbuckle & Keaton, 1917)
His Wedding Night (Arbuckle, 1917)
*Coney Island (Arbuckle, 1917)

** Accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra

Okja (2017, Bong) 7/10
*Ghost World (2001, Zwigoff) 8/10
*Far from Heaven (2002, Haynes) 10/10
*The 10th Victim (1965, Petri) 6/10
Ikarie XB 1 (1963, Polák) 7/10
Bend of the River (1952, Mann) 7/10
Winchester ’73 (1950, Mann) 9/10
God’s Own Country (2017, Lee) 7/10
*The Errand Boy (1961, Lewis) 7/10
False Faces (1932, Sherman) 6/10
Wonderstruck (2017, Haynes) 5/10
Faces Places (2017, Varda, JR) 7/10

Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017) 8/10
Wonderstruck (2017, Haynes) 6/10
Lucky (2017, Lynch) 5/10
Meantime (1983, Leigh) 7/10
Late Chrysanthemums (Naruse, 1954) 8/10

i found Nocturama underwhelming

Shoot; that's about my favorite movie I've seen all year.

MUBI:
Under the Sign of Satan (Pialat, 1987)
Making Plans for Lena (Christopher Honore, 2009)

Cinema:
Floating Clouds (Naruse, 1955)

Wild Life (Kahn)
Marguerite & Julien (Donzelli)*
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (Schlöndorff & von Trotta)
The American Friend (Wenders)
Wings of Desire (Wenders)*
Faraway, So Close! (Wenders)
Christiane F - We Children of Bahnhof Zoo (Edel)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tykwer)
Made in U.S.A. (Godard)
La Chinoise (Godard)
Tout va Bien (Godard)
Numéro Deux (Godard)
Monty Python’s Meaning of Life (Jones)*
The Square (Östlund)
My 20th Century (Enyedi)
Winter Campaign (Enyedi)
The Magic Hunter (Enyedi)
Simon, The Magician (Enyedi)
On Body and Soul (Enyedi)
Damnation (Tarr)*
The Age of Innocence (Scorsese)
The Lobster (Lanthimos)*
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Lanthimos)
Lumumba, The Death of a Prophet (Peck)
The Young Karl Marx (Peck)
Human Flow (Ai)
Eruptia (Ciulei)
The Danube Waves (Ciulei)
Forest of the Hanged (Ciulei)
The Shining (Kubrick)*

I've never seen an Enyedi film. Anything worthwhile?

My 20th Century is kinda incredible in it's own way, black/white counter narrative of the 20th century which includes digressions told by a chimpanzee or two stars in the sky. Winter Campaign is a really strange experimental documentary which is worth seeing if you can find it. On Body and Soul is fine for what it is, not the best Golden Bear winner ever, but a sweet art film with beautiful imagery. Avoid The Magic Hunter, even though it was executive produced by David Bowie.

Streaming:

Requiem for a Village (David Gladwell, 1975) - has elements of film, doc and a curious use of slow-motion. There is a reclamation of a radical English countryside here. I loved the two sequences, one after another: 1) a colonel agitating the elderly troops in a church followed by 2) villagers rising up from their graves. Politics and magic side-by-side.

Film:

Still Life (Shoaib Shahid Saless, 1974) - saw it in a retro yesterday and its an increadible work. This is a year before Jean Dielman and there are connections to be drawn in the static shots of a very sterile domesticity that is transformed under the microscope. What is underneath is never far away, the outside world is never kept fully out - and when this hits a rupture is created. The last shot is unforgettable.

Requiem for a Village is on youtube as well, getting good Le Quattro Volte vibes from that opening sequence.

It's very good so far, but the grave stuff reminds me of those appalling Stanley Spencer paintings.

Never come across them before..

He did lots of ugly, muddy brown paintings of people climbing out of their graves. Or self portraits with his cock out. An absolute dud.

Champagne (Hitchcock, 1928)
*Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
The Uneasy Three (McCarey, 1925)
Children of Divorce (Lloyd, 1927)
*The Lodger (Hitchcock, 1927)
*Blackmail (silent version, Hitchcock, 1929)
Be Your Age (McCarey, 1926)
*Wings (Wellman, 1927)
*The Kid Brother (Wilde, 1927)
Humoresque (Borzage, 1920)

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
The plot for this was ridiculous but hey nice cinematography and music was great 6/10

Gerald's Game (2017)
This was great but jesus that ending 6/10

Senna (2010)
I enjoyed this but maybe not as much as Amy or Supersonic which I was more emotionally invested in 7/10

A Separation (2011)
This really is as good and heart-wrenching as I was led to believe. A simple story but really well delivered through rich characterisation 8/10

Shot! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock (2016)
Mick Rock talks a lot of old bollocks occasionally but it was engaging

The Chase (1966)
It starts very slow but it really kicks into gear in the last 80 minutes. Quite ahead of its time in its depiction of fractured America 7/10

Mindhorn (2016)
Brit comedy along the lines of Garth Merenghi. washed up actor who plays a secret agent with a bionic eye, returns to the Isle of Man, the area where his most famous role was set, to help catch a killer. Good fun I guess 6/10

Safe (1995)
I've been meaning to catch this one for a long time. Its pretty good although very chilly. Some images really stayed with me. Its almost like a horror movie in many regards 7/10

Cameraperson (2016

A Quiet Passion (2017)
Cynthia Nixon might be a bit old to play Emily Dickinson but man is she good in this 7/10

The Meyerowitz Stories (2017)
This movie is really uneven. I think Alfred might be onto something when he said that the Baumbach movies that dont feature Greta Gerwig lack something 6/10

Good Time (2007)
Wow, this is realy good. Probably the best movie Ive seen so far this year. Robert Pattinson is excellent and I love the Carpenter-esque Oneohtrix Point One score 8/10

The Big Heat (1953)
Top drawer noir. Audience audibly gasped at *that* scene and also the car bomb scene 8/10

at home

A Man Escaped - 9/10
The Seventh Seal - 8/10
L’Argent - 9/10
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant - 7/10
I Married a Witch - 9/10
Marnie - 7/10
Nashville - 10/10
Ivan’s Childhood - 9/10
Make Way for Tomorrow - 8/10
Sullivan’s Travels - 7/10
Bicycle Thieves - 8/10
Blue - 9/10

Crazy Like a Fox (McCarey, 1926)
The Mortal Storm (Borzage, 1940)
Long Fliv the King (McCarey, 1926)
His Wooden Wedding (McCarey, 1925)
Our Heavenly Bodies (Kornblum, 1925)
Behind the Door (Willat, 1919)
Prix de Beaute (silent version, Genina, 1930)
Cops (Keaton & Cline, 1922)
Plane Crazy (Disney, 1928)
*Casanova (Volkoff, 1927)
*A Modern Musketeer (Dwan, 1917)

Lucky (6.0)
Norte, the End of History (6.5)
Perfect Stranger (4.5)
Ex Libris (8.0)
California Typewriter (7.0)
More Than the Rainbow (6.5)
The Mirror (--)
LBJ (5.5)
The Meyerowitz Stories (6.0)
Lady Bird (7.0)

(--) is my new shorthand for "grappled with, may grapple again."

El Sur/The South by Victor Erice - very cosy. Aside from this and Beehive are any of his other films similar?

Those are his only two feature films (there's also a superb documentary about a painter, The Quince Tree Sun, and a short film from 2006 that I've never seen).

The Devil Strikes at Night (1957, Siodmak) 7/10
Black Gravel (1961, Kautner) 9/10
Lady Macbeth (2016, Oldroyd) 6/10
Blade Runner 2049 (2017, Villeneuve) 4/10
*The Headless Woman (2008, Martel) 8/10
*Blade Runner (1982, Scott) 7/10
*The Paradine Case (1947, Hitchcock) 6/10
BPM (aka 120 Beats Per Minute) (2017, Campillo) 9/10
Hercules in the Haunted World (1961, Bava) 6/10
*They Live by Night (1948, Ray) 10/10
*Secrets & Lies (1996, Leigh) 9/10

Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017) 9/10
BPM (Beats per Minute) (Campillo, 2017) 7/10
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Lanthimos, 2017) 8/10
Nocturama (Bonello, 2017) 6/10
The Square (Östlund, 2017) 3/10
Taipei Story (Yang, 1985) 8/10
* An Osaka Story (Mizoguchi, 1957) 8/10
Floating Clouds (Naruse, 1955) 7/10
Late Chrysanthemums (Naruse, 1954) 7/10
* In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1952) 8/10
*Gaslight (Cukor, 1944) 7/10
* Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940) 8/10

L'Humanite (1999) 4.5/5
Chappie (2015) 3/5
Every Everything: The Music, Life & Times of Grant Hart (2013) 3/5
Thor: Ragnarok (2017) 3.5/5
30 for 30: Nature Boy (2017) 2.5/5
Days and Nights in the Forest (1970) 4/5

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Lanthimos, 2017) 8/10

Killing to killing.

Lol, has they really translated that line from The Square into 'Don't be so Swedish?' That's hilarious since 1) that's not at all what is said and 2) the whole joke of the line is that neither of them are Swedish, both of them are from Denmark.

I didn't get that either

There was a couple of clunkers in the Danish translation as well. The publicists speak of problems in the world including 'politicies from the Sweden Democrats' which are the right-wing populists. That just became 'political policies'. And they want to get the art to other people than usual, but in Swedish they use a specific gendered insult to the regular cultural crowd, which was made gender neutral in Danish. It's sad that such a sharp and pointed piece satire is being hurt by bad translations :(

You didn't get what?

I thought, "Well, maybe Danes know something about Swedish parochialism that escapes me."

Well, yeah, it's a giant Danish assumption about Swedes that theyr're politically correct and boring.. It's just, the line is 'The Swedes aren't here', rather than 'Don't be so Swedish', which is kinda nonsense.

I only just now caught up with "John Wick," and that might be the dumbest movie of its OTT sort I've seen since "Punisher: War Zone." Almost didn't finish watching it, it was so surreally silly.

and yet critics under 40 seem to agree it's an action "classic" with near-unanimity

MUBI:

Dead or Alive (parts 1 and 2, Miike, 1999/2000) - surrealism is a proper thing, not even ashamed to spell that word out.
Ley Lines (Miike, 1999)
Autumn Leaves (Aldrich, 1956) - I could Joan Crawford for a long time to come. The film was possibly an early attempt to deal wtih the stigma of mental illness. It has a half-shocking/half-laughable scene of abuse.

Cinema:

Akitsu Springs (Yoshida, 1962) - this is a melodrama with an existential black hole at its core, in beautiful colours.

John Wick 2 >>>>>>> John Wick