Last (x) movies you saw

Thank you for validating my own enjoyment of Loveless, wins.

{spoilers)I thought it was a really impressive piece of filmmaking. The Sight and Sound review (which, as always, I read after seeing the film) was quite dismissive - heavy-handed (a woman on a treadmill wearing a track suit w/ Russia written on it), didactic (everyone bad is on their mobile phone all the time oh the humanity), predictably arty (refuses to resolve the mystery of the vanished child) etc. But for me it was gripping all the way through, and I don't mind a bit of didacticism when the imagery is so stunning - the slow opening wintery shots, the sequence in the abandoned building, the exterior shots of the high rise at night. Not as funny as Leviathan, but a more complete film.

of the three Zvyagintsev films I've seen, I like Elena best; haven't gotten to this one.

This one gave me strong Kieslowski 10 Commandment vibes at times

rough night (2017 lucia aniello) 3/10
the shape of water (2017 del toro) 8/10
the devil's backbone (2001 del toro) 8/10
Ingrid goes west (2017 spicer) 6/10
3 billboards outside ebbing, Missouri (2017 mcdonagh) 4/10
phantom thread (2017 pta) 8/10
extremities (1986 Robert m young) 5/10
the pope of Greenwich village (1984 Rosenberg) 5/10
the square (2017 ostlund) 6/10
big night (1996 tucci/scott) 9/10

A Fantastic Woman (Lelio, 2017)
Mudbound(Rees, 2017) 5/10
Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)
In the Fade(Akin, 2017) 4/10
After the Storm (Kore-eda, 2017) 6/10
Félicité (Gomis, 2017) 7/10
* God's Own Country (Lee, 2017) 7/10
Battle of the Sexes (Dayton and Faris, 2017) 5/10
The Man Without a Past (Kaurismaki, 2002) 7/10
* A Nos Amours (Pialat, 1983) 8/10
* Face to Face (Bergman, 1976 6/10
* Mikey and Nicky (May, 1976) 7/10
L'enfance Nue (Pialat, 1968) 8/10
The Passion of Anna (Bergman, 1968) 5/10
* Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman, 1960) 9/10
* The Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi, 1952) 10/10
Wagon Master (Ford, 1950)
Watch on the Rhine (Shumlin, 1943) 4/10
After the Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1936) 4/10
The Crime of Monsieur Lange(Renoir, 1936) 9/10

Thought L'enfance Nue was fantastic when I saw it two or three years ago.

Pialat's work my favorite recent-ish discovery. See his "House In The Woods" tv mini series if you can.

Graduation (2016) 6/10
Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD (2014) 5/10
The Longest Yard (2005) 6/10
Phantom Thread (2017) 9/10
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) 5/10
It Comes At Night (2017) 7/10
Zootopia (2016) 8/10
Thor: Ragnarok (2017) 7/10
Loving Vincent (2017) 6/10

Good Time (Safdie/Safdie, 2017)
Nocturama (Bonello, 2016)
Personal Shopper (Assayas, 2017)
*The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
The Mission (To, 1999)
The Black Balloon (short - Safdie/Safdie, 2012)
Black Panther (Coogler, 2018)
Prospero's Books (Greenaway, 1991)
Bluebeard (short - Painlevé, 1936)
Logan Lucky (Soderbergh, 2017)
Festival (Lerner, 1967)

Festival haul from Berlin. I'm not going to grade, but do ask if there's anything anyone wants to know about. Best ones are Infinite Football, Khook, and, surprisingly for me, Mug. And the Lav Diaz one is disappointing :(

Isle of Dogs (Anderson)
Classical Period (Fendt)
Interchange (Cassidy & Shatzky)
Inland Sea (Soda)
Wild Relatives (Manna)
Las Hereredas (Martinessi)
Damsel (Zellner & Zellner)
Black 47 (Daly)
L’Empire de la Perfection (Faraut)
Dovlatov (German Jr)
Transit (Petzold)
Eva (Jacquot)
Garbage (Q)
La Prière (Kahn)
Figlia Mia (Bispuri)
The Real Estate (Månsson & Petersén)
Young Astrid (Christensen)
Infinite Football (Porumboiu)
U-July 22 (Poppe)
3 Days in Quiberon (Atef)
Season of the Devil (Diaz)
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot (van Sant)
Victory Day (Loznitsa)
Khook (Haghighi)
An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu)
Mein Bruder Heisst Robert und ist ein Idiot (Gröning)
Unsane (Soderbergh)
Museo (Ruizpalacios)
Touch Me Not (Pintilie)
11 x 14 (Benning)
Mug (Szumowska)
In the Aisle (Stuber)

how is isle of dogs and the new gus van sant?

Wrote about Isle of Dogs in it's thread. Probably my favorite Anderson other than his masterpiece Moonrise Kingdom. New van Sant is fine but kinda kinda nothingy. You've seen it all before, but it's not bad.

sounds about right

How was Black '47?

Rubbish imo. I'm all for seeing Englishmen killed for their role in the Irish famine, but the film also wanted to ask serious questions and was kinda boringly shot. Needed much more gore and beheadings.

That's a shame. There's never been a proper film about the famine and I had my doubts that Lance Daly would be the right man for the job.

Yeah, the subject deserves a great movie. A lot of them, probably. But the Irish are mostly just suffering with no agency, and the English in the film are so obviously evil that they kinda condensate the collective guilt into these few people. Who knows, if it becomes a succes, perhaps there'll be a second attempt?

The Emigrants (1972, Troell) - (9/10)
The New Land (1972, Troell) - (9/10)

I’d never even heard of these until a friend recommended them the other week. Was that just a blind spot on my part or have they been kinda pushed aside?

Anyway, utterly captivating 6-ish hours of von Sydow, Ullmann + others working their way from Sweden to the American Midwest in the mid 1800’s. Sounded like work but incredibly watchable from frame one. Beautiful, wrenching films.

Joachim Trier said in his Criterion Closet video that those films made him “understand something fundamental about America as a European, and I won’t say more.” Been meaning to check them out but keep avoiding due to prohibitive length. Glad to hear it’s not a slog.

Unfortunately just left FilmStruck as of today. The ticking expiration was my impetus for jumping in.

It’s certainly... grueling in parts, particularly in The New Land. But you can’t watch the first 90 minutes of The Emigrants and NOT want to see it to completion. Amazing pair of films and criminally under appreciated.

The Villainess: Totally berserk Korean action/crime/revenge movie. Some astonishing violence, but it's about 30 minutes too long and 45 of those extra 30 minutes involve the protagonist crying. Free on Hulu.

xp i'll keep them in my mind next time they do a flash sale

Didn't realize until recently MVS and Liv Ullmann are the leads in it, which is a big incentive...

Face to Face (Bergman, 1976) - its the TV version and its a masterpiece. Highlight of the Bergman season for me so far and one of the best film screenings I'll go to this year.

I saw the 135-minute film a second time a couple weeks ago and thought it solidly second tier. Is the 177-minute version available for Stateside consumption?

As far as I'm aware the 177 min version isn't available in the UK either, this was a one-off screening.

Amazing pair of films and criminally under appreciated.

I've been meaning to see them forever. I don't know that they were underappreciated at the time--they made a lot of Top 10s and won or were nominated for lots of big awards.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067919/awards?ref_=tt_ql_op_1
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069035/awards?ref_=tt_ql_op_1

Part of the reason they haven't received their just due was their unavailability. I bought the Criterion edition when released in 2016 and haven't regretted it.

Discontent (Siegler & Weber, 1916)
The High Sign (Cline & Keaton, 1921)
Black Panther (Coogler, 2018)
Max and His Mother-in-Law (Nonguet et Linder, 1911)
Feline Follies (Messmer, 1919)
The Old Barn (Sennett, 1929)
Taris (Vigo, 1931)
À Propos de Nice (Vigo, 1930)
*Zero for Conduct (Vigo, 1933)
Attempted Suicide (Gasnier, 1906)
The Barber Shop (Ripley, 1933)
Un Idiot qui se Croit Max Linder (Bosetti et Nonguet, 1914)
Pool Sharks (Middleton, 1915)
Don't Be Nervous (Watson, 1929)
Kick Me Again (Myers, 1925)
*L'Atalante (Vigo, 1934)
Post No Bills (Ceder, 1923)
Gussle's Wayward Path (Avery & Chaplin, 1915)
Too Many Highballs (Bruckman, 1933)
*Kean (Volkoff, 1924)

If anyone cares about my numbered ratings, see https://letterboxd.com/PollyPrecoder/films/diary/.

february in theaters:

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool - 3/10
Lover for a Day - 9/10
Peter Rabbit - 6/10
The Magician (1958) - 8/10
Porto - 6/10
Maigret Sets a Trap (1958) - 8/10
Game Night - 9/10
Annihilation - 8/10

Marathon (1993) 3/5
The Mission (1999) 3.5/5
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983; rewatch) 4/5
The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) 4.5/5
Black Panther (2018) 4/5
El (1953) 4/5
XTC: This is Pop (2017) 3/5
Dragon Inn (1967) 3/5
The Color of Pomegranates (1969) 3/5 to 5/5, depending on how much the symbolism just went over my head.
Fruit of Paradise (1970) 4/5

Un Mauvais Fils : 9/10 - Great Sautet film. Patrick Dewaere in non-manic mode is excellent.
The Florida Project : 6/10 - Loved Dafoe in this. Not sure what they were getting at here but it's an interesting indie.
Black Panther : 8/10 - Borderline psychedelic Afrofuturist fun.
The Hot Spot : 6/10
Cesar et Rosalie: 8/10 - Man, I love Sautet when he was on.

Staying Vertical (Guiraudie, 2016) 4/10
*Lost in America (Brooks, 1985) 9/10
D.O.A. (Maté, 1950) 7/10
Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve, 2017) 7/10
Hopscotch (Neame, 1980) 7/10
Two Women (De Sica, 1960) 8/10
Ingrid Goes West (Spicer, 2017) 7/10

L’avventura - 10/10
Drop Dead Gorgeous - 9/10
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - 10/10
To Be or Not to Be - 8/10
La Notte - 8/10
Dude, Where’s My Car? - 10/10
Monterey Pop - 9/10
Shock Corridor - 6/10
Suspicion - 8/10
Two-Lane Blacktop - 6/10
Code Unknown - 8/10
Fox and His Friends - 8/10
Design for Living - 8/10
Pumpkin - 10/10
Short Cuts - 10/10
Two Tons of Turquoise to Taos Tonight - 7/10
Some Like It Hot - 7/10
I Am Waiting - 8/10
The Merchant of Four Seasons - 10/10
Jules and Jim - 5/10
Vera Drake - 9/10
Vampyr - 8/10
Love is Colder Than Death - 7/10
The Double Life of Véronique - 9/10
L’eclisse - 7/10

Downsizing (Payne, 2017) 5/10
The Woman Next Door (Truffaut, 1981) 7/10
The Party (Edwards, 1968) 6/10
Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998) 5/10
Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017) 8/10
Touchez Pas au Grisbi (Becker, 1954) 7/10
To Kill a Mockingbird (Mulligan, 1962) 8/10
Loveless (Zvyagintsev, 2017) 8/10
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Tati, 1953) 7/10
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (Baumbach, 2017) 7/10

some of the really callous dialogue in Loveless completely cracked me up, like the straight talking police officer saying the streets will be even more inhospitable than your shitty home. I fell asleep watching it cos of tiredness and red wine, but I have to watch that again it seemed pretty great.

The Stanford Prison Experiment (6.0)
The Regular Lovers (6.5)
The Last Time (4.0)
In the Company of Men (7.5)
Blade Runner 2049 (6.0)
The Face of an Angel (6.0)
Election (8.0)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (7.0)
Rising Sun (5.5)
The Gambler (3.5)

I didn't know someone had remade The Gambler until I found it in a remainder bin last week. I wouldn't say that Karel Reisz's original is a great film--very mid-'70s, for mostly better and some worse--but I've seen it many times and always get caught up in it. The new one, with Mark Wahlberg, has to be one of the worst things I've sat through in years. Even John Goodman's terrible.

red sparrow sucked

The Square was intermittently funny, but it let pretty much every plot thread dangle and some of the stuff with the most potential (a janitor vacuuming up a piece of art) was handled off-camera, which was disappointing. Can't really recommend it.

Sweet Bean - 8/10
*Ran - 8/10
*The Hidden Fortress - 8/10
Garçon - 7/10
Call Me By Your Name - 7/10
Kedi - 7/10
A Season In Hell - Terence Stamp as Rimbaud and JC Brialy as Verlaine! In Italian! Still miles better than the DiCaprio Rimbaud flick and that's not saying much - 6/10

Anna Boleyn (Lubitsch, 1920)
The Doll (Lubitsch, 1919)
I Don't Want To Be A Man (Lubitsch, 1918)
In a Difficult Position (Heuze, 1908)
Anybody's Goat (Goodrich Arbuckle, 1932)
Benjamin Smoke (Cohen & Sillen, 2000)
Shooting Stars (Bramble & Asquith, 1928)
La Malle au Mariage (Linder, 1912)
Loveless (Zvyagintsev, 2017)
Down With Husbands (Watson, 1930)
Romeo Turns Bandit (Bosetti, 1909)

For numbered ratings: https://letterboxd.com/PollyPrecoder/films/diary/

j.lu, what is your source for watching most silent films?

*The Scarlet Letter (1926, Sjöström) 9/10
*The Magician aka The Face (1958, Bergman) 9/10
Night After Night (1932, Mayo) 5/10
Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971, Grosbard) 6/10
Hour of the Wolf (1968, Bergman) 8/10
Torment (1944, Sjöberg) 5/10
He Who Gets Slapped (1924, Sjöström) 8/10
Wild Boys (2017, Mandico) 5/10
El mar la mar (2017, Snaidecki, Bonnetta) 7/10
I’ve Always Loved You (1946, Borzage) 7/10
The Rite (1969, Bergman) 5/10

xp Common sources for shorts: 1) Archive.org and 2) Ben Model's Youtube channel and ensuing recommendations. The Lubitsch titles are from the Lubitsch in Berlin box, which I'm working through in anticipation of flipping on Amazon. And the National Gallery of Art film program brings in a lot of silents.

thx, I know Ben!

"Marutai no onna"/"Woman in Witness Protection" (Juzo Itami, 1997). Loved this. Nobuko Miyamoto is incredible in it. I need to see more Juzo Itami movies.

(what do the asterixes mean again?)

rewatch

El mar la mar (2017, Snaidecki, Bonnetta)

I thought this was not uninteresting substantively or formally, but was at least a little disturbed by the choice to give screen time to the militia, and didn't find the filmmakers particularly thoughtful about it.

hey if it's playing in your city I highly recommend THE PARTY, a very short (71 minutes) black comedy by Sally Potter. great cast: Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, Cillian Murphy, Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall. I realize it came out in the UK in October but just opened here in the States.