Last (x) movies you saw

man i loved Network and everyone who finds it 'too preachy' or whatever misunderstands it (or i did)

Chayefsky's arias are both an asset (the florid ballsiness) and a drag (most of the ideas)

Chayefsky was reveling in the fall of the Hays Code and the absence of TV networks' Standards and Practices departments. I understood all that overripe dialogue (at least I think), but kept wondering what modern mass audiences would make of it.

xpost Rat Film had a lot of potential, and we actually saw it on a few year end lists. We were just bummed at its ... lack of focus? Like, several of the characters it featured would have made good doc subjects themselves, but they were squeezed into this amorphous and yeah shaggy snapshot of a city approach that was heavy on portent but light on execution, with an insanely affected narrator, lots of quirky camera stuff, digressions into Dan Deacon, not enough about rats, and (imo) ultimately not enough about Baltimore, either. Like, early on the main rat catcher makes a point of saying "Baltimore does not have a rat problem, it has a people problem," but then it doesn't really deliver on that point, which I guess I was expecting. Like you said, when it gets to the metaphoric apocalypse, it just seems rushed and unearned, because what little we see of the city and its people ... they seem pretty happy! And even the rat problem does not seem like much of a problem.

One Eyed Jacks really surprised me with how good it is.

Is there any particularly good youtube channels for arthouse trailers? The channels of BFI, Criterion, Eureka, Second Run, Arrow Academy etc hardly ever upload trailers.

Red Garters (Marshall, 1954)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
Holiday (Griffith, 1930)
Love and Hisses (White, 1934)
Alibi Bye Bye (Holmes, 1935)
Justice League (Snyder, 2017)
Max Linder Pratique Tous les Sports (Linder, 1913)
Max Victime du Quinquina (Linder, 1911)
Max et son âne (Linder et Leprince, 1912)
Lured (Sirk, 1947)
The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives (Ising & Harman, 1933)
The Goat (Keaton & St. Clair, 1921)
The Black Hand (McCutcheon, 1906)
Convict 13 (Keaton & Cline, 1920)
Dixiana (Reed, 1930)

I, Tonya
Shape of Water
Disaster Artist
We Are The Best (annual screening)
Fanny and Alexander (theatrical release)
To Catch a Thief

I, Tonya was 30 minutes too long... but some of the best acting of the year. Margot Robbie is obviously excellent, but Allison Janney steals the show.

Multiple Maniacs (Waters, 1970) 6/10
My Blue Heaven (Ross, 1990) 5/10
The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940) 8/10
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (Peckinpah, 1970) 5/10
*The Sting (Hill, 1973) 7/10
It’s Only the End of the World (Dolan, 2016) 5/10
*My Cousin Vinny (Lynn, 1992) 6/10

Comfort and Joy (Forsyth, 1984) 7/10
Happy End (Haneke, 2017) 8/10
Raising Cain ('Director's Cut') (De Palma, 1992) 5/10
Blade of the Immortal (Miike, 2017) 7/10
The Disaster Artist (Franco, 2017) 6/10
The Yakuza (Pollack, 1974) 6/10
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017) 5/10
Spotlight on a Murderer (Franju, 1961) 6/10
Remember the Night (Leisen, 1940) 6/10
Payroll (Hayers, 1961) 6/10
Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (Miike, 2011) 5/10

Antoporno (Sion Sono, 2016)
Winter Light (Bergman, 1963) - yes, I went to the cinema for New Year's day punishment. It was good.

So the last movie I watched in 2017 (Chantal Akerman’s News From Home) and the first movie I watched in 2018 (Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild) ended and began respectively with the same shot: on a Manhattan ferry facing the Financial District. Was pretty wild coincidence & I’m taking it as a good omen.

unfortunately i believe both those shots feature my workplace

Get Out (2017, Peele) 6/10
Lucky Star (1929, Borzage) 8/10
Phantom Thread (2017, Anderson) 9/10
In Transit (2015, Maysles, True, Usui, Wu, Walker) 8/10
*Cinderfella (1960, Tashlin) 8/10
*Pola X (1999< Carax) 9/10
The Sea Wolf (1941, Curtiz) 7/10
The Work (2017, McLeary, Aldous) 8/10
Ex Libris: New York Public Library (2017, Wiseman) 7/10
What About Me? (1993, Amodeo) 5/10
Chains (1949, Matarazzo) 7/10
Stay Hungry (1976, Rafelson) 6/10
Strong Island (2017, Ford) 8/10
The Sons of Katie Elder (1965, Hathaway) 7/10

Phantom Thread (2017, Anderson) 9/10

dang

others' reactions might be "well that's only one notch better than Cinderfella."

silence ('16 Scorsese) 7/10
certain women ('16 reichardt) 7/10
life ('17 Daniel Espinosa) 3/10
boat trip ('02 mort Nathan) 7/10
goin' south ('78 Nicholson) 5/10
*arrival ('16 vileneuve) 8/10
midnight express ('78 parker) 4/10
blue jasmine ('13 allen) 6/10
song to song ('17 malick) 7/10
any given sunday ('99 stone) 4/10
best of enemies ('15 Gordon/Neville) 6/10
kate plays Christine ('16 greene) 9/10

others' reactions might be "well that's only one notch better than Cinderfella

Too busy noting the true-to-yourself-ness of ranking the critically acclaimed, crossover horror hit as the second worst thing you saw in the whole batch.

Ward: Comfort and Joy is one of my favourite films ever.

But Eric, I filter for quality! Get Out is still better than average (for ppl who watch average movies).

(it's true, i give less of a shit about hits/non-hits than ever)

Lucky 8/10
The Disaster Artist 4/10
J'Accuse (1936 ) 8/10
Lady Bird 6/10
I, Tonya 6/10

Donnie Darko (Director's Cut) 8.5/10

Much prefer the hazier non-director's cut

The Thief of Bagdad (1940) 3.5/5
49th Parallel (1941) 3.5/5
Moonstruck (1987) 4.5/5
Crime Wave (the John Paizs one;1985;rewatch) 4/5
Liquid Sky (1982) 3.5/5
Kedi (2016) 3/5
Wormwood (2017) 4/5
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) 3/5
Logan Lucky (2017) 3.5/5
Nocturama (2016) 4/5

ladybird - 9/10
gilbert - 7/10
we're the millers - 3/10
wilson - 3/10

lol........ wilson

which Wilson? The 1944 Woodrow biopic?

doubtless better than

All the Money in the World (Scott, 2017)
Out West (Arbuckle, 1918)
The Hayseed (Arbuckle, 1919)
Week-End Wives (Lachman, 1929)
Neighbors (Keaton & Cline, 1920)
*There It Is (Bowers & Muller, 1928)
The Far Country (Mann, 1955)
Million Dollar Legs (Cline, 1932)
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (Joyce & Oldenberg, 2011)
Dreams that Money Can Buy (Richter, 1947)
*Fatty's Tintype Tangle (Arbuckle, 1915)
Oh, My Operation (Cozine, 1931)
Max Wants a Divorce (Linder, 1917)
His First Cigar (Gasnier, 1908)
Max Plays at Drama (Linder et Leprince, 1911)
Liliom (Lang, 1934)
The Florida Project (Baker, 2017)
Out of the Blue (Gerrard, 1931)

Finally saw Lady Bird, and found it frustating. From the hype and some conscientious reviews, I expected dark, dense mother-daughter conflict on the foreground, not all the way through, but the plot leading to spiraling clashes---and we got the schematics for that, with as much force as Laurie Metcalf could squeeze in there---but breaded with the sweet hyper YA mediocrity; Sacremento Beeing and Nothingness. Lady Bird is the bee, buzzin' through the sweetburbs, though makes sense that she would be like this while mainly pushing against the repressive mothering. Mom announces that she's the child of an alcoholic mother, and the other threat of chaos breaking out again concerns the economic and emotional undertow of Dad, who has finally [?] lost his disappointing job (but is the most convenient depressive ever, far as Lady Bird's current plans are concerned). So Mom makes sense too (incl. being the empathetic mental health professional, efficiently compulsively earnestly compartmentalized).
But jeez all this watered down, perfectly timed high school crap, watered-down nuns, for instance, and the one guy who cares about the outside world, who is shown reading A People's History of the United States, is a paranoid depresso flake--says his father's dying of cancer, and the connection is never developed, no way Lady Bird's gonna think to even ask if he wants to talk about it, and the depiction of the brown people, the insular classmate, the adopted brother and his girlfriend in limbo for the moment (but they're stunned by the idea that they can't get jobs cause metal in the faces)--does make sense that they're wary of hyper Lady Bird, but they are otherwise props, and the depresso brown teddy bear priest eh; the little boy at the end is a reminder that some people are worse off than sheee, cause he's got a big ol' bandage, awww. 5/10

Everybody here that I've seen before can do better, prob most of the noobs too. Can Gerwig make better movies, better TV when she gets more clout? I hope for that too. Bring in the candles.

Saw Assayas' Personal Shopper last night (it's on Showtime; it might also be free if you have Amazon Prime), and I liked it. It reminded me of William Gibson's trilogy of thrillers about marketing (Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History), with some mildly goofy ghost-story stuff thrown in. Kristen Stewart's a nonentity whose appeal is totally baffling to me, but she was moderately OK in a few scenes here. Mostly I enjoyed the sense it conveyed of living in a nonplace-ish EU populated entirely by ultra-rich people and their servants.

I liked Stewart in Personal Shopper, but she was definitely aided by a script and direction that used her blankness as an asset.

You bitchy queens. She was magnificent.

Incredible!

An Exercise in Discipline: Peel (short - Campion, 1982)
L'Age d'Or (Buñuel, 1930)
A Quiet Passion (Davies, 2016)
Spitfire (Howard, 1942)
Godzilla (Honda, 1954)
Poison (Haynes, 1991)
Spark of Being (short - Morrison, 2010)
Release (short - Morrison, 2010)
Just Ancient Loops (short - Morrison, 2012)
Ten (Kiarostami, 2002)
Free Fire (Wheatley, 2017)
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (Zahler, 2017)

what the hell is a "watered-down nun"?

The Circle (5.0)
Jobs (6.0)
Boogie Nights (10.0)
Mark Felt (6.0)
The Right Stuff (8.0)
Detroit (5.5)
My Friend Dahmer (6.0)
State of Play (7.0)
I, Tonya (5.5)
The Post (7.0)
There Will Be Blood (8.0)

On Paul Thomas Anderson's tombstone: "One goddamn hell of a show."

(Or "Hot fuck action to the max"--they both work.)

Troll 2 (1990)

watched this for movie night last night. i forgot how insane this movie is! the part where grandpa shows up and hands the kid a molotov cocktail! that insane goth lady with the corncob seduction scene! infinitely better bad movie than The Room.

I liked the popcorn sex scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG1y3UdqN8w

yeah everything about this is certifiably insane

back to the future -- 9/10

Hey There (Goulding, 1918)
Breezing Along (Taurog, 1927)
I'm the Sheriff (Kenton, 1927)
*Hotel Anchovy (Christie, 1934)
Max in a Taxi (Linder, 1927)
Love in Armor (Cogley & Grandon, 1915)
A Hash House Fraud (Chase, 1915)
Allez Oop (Keaton & Lamont, 1934)
A Straight Crook (Roach, 1921)
Papa's Boy (Taurog, 1927)
Way Back When Women Had Their Weigh (Fleischer, 1940)
Feet First (Bruckman, 1930)
Aunt Sally (Whelan, 1934)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston, 1948)

The Girl On The Train

Back to the future 2 — 8/10

i didn't like personal shopper at all

was that one of the 75th anniversary theater showings of Sierra Madre, j.lu? i've always found it a little overrated.

also i never list short films, but you likely see more of those vintage comedies than i do.

xp 70th anniversary, rather