Last (x) movies you saw (II)

* Midnight Run (Brest, Gallo 1988) ⚰️ 10/10 unimproveable, possible career-best Joey Pants perf
* Beverly Hills Cop (Brest, Petrie Jr., Bach 1984) ACAB/10, plenty of fun but for a movie where class clash is the premise, it really has almost no idea of what to do with that beyond sneakers vs suits, whiteppldrivelikeTHIS.gif
A New Leaf (Elaine May after Jack Ritchie 1971) 9/10 #releasethematthaumurderscut BUT Matthau is so wonderfully repellent, and such a shit directly to May through the middle, that idk if I could take an extra 90 minutes of him being worse, before his 1mm of character growth in the end parts.
The Owl And The Pussycat (Ross, Henry, Manhoff 1970) ⚰️ 1/10, I continue to not understand the appeal of B. Streisand as an artist or personality in any form
Mind Over Mayhem (Kjellin, Specht, Bochco, Hargrove, Kibbee 1974) ⚰️ 2/10, maybe dock one point for Robby The Robot
Seven Stages to Achieve Eternal Bliss (Caldinelli, Hewitson, Jones, Hewitson 2020) 6/10, maybe one extra point for Rhea Seehorn
* Rushmore (Anderson, Wilson 1998) 9/10, have always held this in my top Wes-es but I think it might be getting better with time. rly appreciate how it has similar detail in costuming and set dressing to his later work but puts the camera at angles and moves it normally, instead of framing things like a diorama - one tiny transitional visual step between Bottle Rocket and the rest of his career
The Puffy Chair (Duplasses 2005) 2/10 - then again all respect to the Dupbros for building an empire out of a home movie and creating thousands of jobs, but imagine how much better this would be if, like Anderson, it had been made with actors and more script and some lights and a tripod. arch setups, awkward interactions, the clash of uptight and entirely deceptive personalities - it's Rushmore in a van.
* Shampoo (Ashby, Towne, Beatty 1975) 8/10. lots of Nixonfilm hits differently post-2016, but: the complete disengagement of most of the characters (nobody even mentions bothering to vote iirc?); the way the Republican party (lower-case) is only concerned with networking and talking money, not their imminent political agenda; and the sequence of Nixon's victory speech on TV contrasted w/ imminent wealth-based violence on the final morning, all rang a little sweeter than previous. really fantastic job of creating an extremely specific period piece of just 5-6 years earlier, too.
Relic (Natalie Erika James, Christian White 2020) 7/10 what if a Babadook but dementia?
* Mars Attacks (Burton, Gems &al. 1996) was idly brainstorming a list of films about the US response to 9/11, but made before 9/11. checked this to confirm it fits, 10/10 masterpiece
Juliet, Naked (Jesse Peretz, Tamara Jenkins, Jim Taylor, Evgenia Peretz after Nick Hornby 2018) 2/10 perfectly serviceable romcom that deliberately acts as a corrective to some earlier Hornby work
That's The Way Of The World (Shore, Lipsyte 1975) 3/10, some discussion here

Five Minutes, Mr Welles (D’Onofrio, Conroy 2005) 31 min
The Making Of Luxor (Scott Morris 1993) 27 min
In The Air Tonight (Andrew Norman Wilson 2020) 11 min

Somehow convinced my daughter to watch Yi-Yi. She made no promises of commitment, so I was both surprised and proud that she was enraptured from the start.

xp

What do the coffins mean?

The only thing I remember about The Owl and the Pussycat is gay icon Barbra Streisand calling George Segal a “faggot,” which surprised me a bit when I saw it.

prompted to watch by a cast member dying (Kotto, Segal, Walter)

it also posits Segal as an uptight square who can scarcely countenance impish spirit of freedom Streisand asking him to share a tiny j in the bath

Spring is a cross between Before Sunrise and An American Werewolf in London or maybe The Fly (Cronenberg version). American dumbass travels to Italy, meets hot girl who's ...not like other girls. Complications ensue. It's on Hulu.

That’s Benson and Moorhead, all their films are worth seeing

Exterminate All the Brutes on HBO looked like tough but necessary stuff, and indeed episode one was both of those things. Feels pretty major.

Belly (1998) 2.5/5
Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971) 4/5
Winter Kills (1979) 2/5
The 4th Man (1983) 3/5
Party Girl (1995) 2.5/5
Sons of the Desert (1933) 3/5
The Last Boy Scout (1991) 3.5/5
Godzilla vs. Kong 2.5/5
* The Godfather Part II 5/5
Bad Trip (2021) 3.5/5

I assume I should read that as "Belly" got a double 5/5 rating, right?

Me as well

You can read it as only the first 5 minutes gets 5 out of 5.

I waited years to see Winter Kills--very hard to get a hold of for a time. Pretty over the top is all I remember; they clearly were trying for a '70s Dr. Strangelove.

It’s an odd movie but I found it strangely dull. Like if a Pynchon novel had all the life and creativity sucked out of it.

The director's cut of Winter Kills was posted to Vimeo by the director for free download a few years ago (he'll also sell you a DVD directly)

Shiva Baby is great, very much of a sort with Tiny Furniture and Appropriate Behavior as a "the young women of nyc are not alright" film of the moment.

The Adventures of Dr. Dolittle: The Trip to Africa (Reiniger, 1928)
Harlequin (Reiniger, 1932)
The Stolen Heart (Reiniger, 1934)
Papageno (Reiniger, 1935)
Love in High Gear (Strayer, 1932)
Dégustation Maison (Tatischeff, 1978)
The Love of Sunya (Parker, 1929)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (Arnold, 1957)
She Wrote a Play and Played It (Curtis, 1916)
Madame Babylas Loves Animals (Machin, 1911)
Saïda has Kidnapped Manneken Pis (Machin, 1913)
*Clubs Are Trumps (Walker, 1917)

Silver Lode, Dwan, 1954, 3/10 -- recommended by elliott kalan
Doctor Strange, some disney hack, 2016, 4/10 -- the rare mcu movie where the third act is the best act
Spider-Man: Homecoming, Watts, 2017, 5/10
*The Dead Zone, Cronenberg, 1983, 8/10
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, Roth, 2018, 4/10
Q: Into the Storm, Hoback, 2021, 5/10 -- i find the people behind q far less interesting than the followers
Two Distant Strangers, Roe & Free, 2020, 4/10

A crappy two weeks. Think I'll resubscribe to Criterion Channel.

Loved "Shiva Baby," which is up there with "Uncut Gems" and "A Serious Man" as Most Jewish Movie of the Last Ten or So Years.

"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" was really good, even if long stretches of it were perhaps predictably very filmed-play, packed with Acting and scenes calibrated for the stage. But Boseman, man, he's transcendent. Makes me want to finally watch "Da 5 Bloods," which I've avoided due to being burned by Spike something like 90% of the time.

The Magic Horse (Reiniger, 1953)
The Caliph Stork (Reiniger, 1954)
Aladdin and the Magic Lamp (Reiniger, 1954)
The Vice Squad (Cromwell, 1931)
Walking Back (Julian, 1928)
Parisian Love (Gasnier, 1925)
French Exit (Jacobs, 2020)
The Crawling Eye (Lawrence, 1958)
Hot Luck (Lamont, 1928)
*My Wife's Relations (Keaton & Cline, 1922)

The Man Called Back (Florey, 1932)
The Leather Pushers: Round Two (Laemmle, 1922)
The Leather Pushers: Round Three "Payment Through the Nose" (1922)
Skinner's Dress Suit (Seiter, 1926)
The Great Gabbo (Cruze & von Stroheim, 1929)
The Rat's Knuckles (McCarey, 1925)
Baseball Film (Kovacs, 1951)
*Coney Island (Arbuckle, 1917)

The Trial of the Chicago 7, Sorkin, 2020, 4/10
Sound of Metal, 2019, 5/10
Mank, Fincher, 2020, abandoned less than an hour in
Nomadland, Zhao, 2020, 6/10
Mangrove, McQueen, 2020, 6/10
The Painter and the Thief, 2020, around 4/10 (abandoned after an hour then skipped to the ending)
Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary, 2019, 6/10

Joan of Arc, Melies, 1900
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Melies, 1902 -- one of his weaker movies, focusing on the least interesting parts of the story. the drawn backgrounds that were interactive reminded me of adventure games like monkey island 2.
The Kingdom of Fairies, Melies, 1903
*Fun and Fancy Free, 1947, 5/10
Melody Time, 1948, 5/10
The Amputee, Lynch, 1974, both versions
Fist of Fury, 1972, 5/10 - the one where bruce lee makes his noises while fighting. astonishingly xenophobic.

April:
Don't Go in the House (Ellison, 1979) 7/10 DVD
The Wrong Arm of the Law (Owen, 1963) 7/10 YOUTUBE
King of Kings (Ray, 1961) 7/10 BBC IPLAYER
Eden and After (Robbe-Grillet, 1970) 7/10 BLU-RAY
Doctor in the House (Thomas, 1954) 6/10 YOUTUBE
Bloody Birthday (Hunt, 1981) 6/10 BLU-RAY
*Scream (Craven, 1996) 7/10 DVD
The Suspicious Death of a Minor (Martino, 1975) 6/10 BLU-RAY
*The Savage Innocents (Ray, 1960) DVD-R - a very hard film to 'score' - the sexual and racial and animal politics are beyond redemption, and obliterate any of the good things (mainly) on the visual side
The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (Miraglia, 1972) 7/10 BLU-RAY
My Dear Killer (Valeri, 1972) 6/10 DVD
The True Story of Jesse James (Ray, 1957) 7/10 YOUTUBE - this film is undone by the central casting of Robert Wagner as Jesse - just as Jeffrey Hunter is a terrible Jesus in King of Kings (Hunter is also in this, and is fine)
Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye (Margheriti, 1973) 5/10 BLU-RAY - if you've ever wanted to see Serge Gainsbourg playing a (dubbed) Scottish police detective, then this is the gothic-giallo for you
Run (Chaganty, 2020) 5/10 NETFLIX
*Trouble in Store (Carstairs, 1953) 7/10 DVD - Norman Wisdom's first starring role
One Good Turn (Carstairs, 1955) 5/10 DVD - Norman and a group of adorable orphans
Manhattan Baby (Fulci, 1982) 5/10 DVD

Rosemary’s Baby (remake, 3.0)
The Handmaid’s Tale (S1-S3, 6.5)
The Adjustment Bureau (6.5)
Town Bloody Hall (7.5)
Sound of Metal (6.5)
Mad Men (S1-S7, 10.0)
Puberty Blues (6.5)
Old Boyfriends (7.0)
The Last Blockbuster (5.5)
The Boys from Brazil (6.5)

I had never seen The French Connection all the way through, but it's streaming free on Amazon Prime now, so I finally checked it out. It's pretty amazing how sketchy it is in terms of character definition, compared with modern movies — there's no big long speech explaining Doyle's past and his issues, just a couple of lines of dialogue about how nobody trusts him because he got another cop killed once, and then everybody moves on. The big car chase is everything people say it is.

New York Nights (Milestone, 1929)
My Pal, The King (Neumann, 1932)
*Camille (Smallwood, 1921)
Docks of San Francisco (Seitz, 1932)
Don Redman & His Orchestra (Henabery, 1934)
Death Takes a Holiday (Leisen, 1934)
Buster's Mix-Up (Meins, 1926)
The Floorwalker (Chaplin, 1916)

Martha (Fassbinder 1974)
The Twentieth Century (Rankin 2019)
*Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (Inagaki 1954)
Funeral Parade of Roses (Matsumoto 1969)
The Pawnshop (Chaplin 1916)
Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple (Inagaki 1955)
Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (Inagaki 1956)
Brink of Life (Bergman 1958)
Nobody (Naishuller 2021)
The Big Gundown (Sollima 1966)
Machine Gun McCain (Montaldo 1969)
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Argento 1970)
Despair (Fassbinder 1978)
Smooth Talk (Chopra 1985)
*Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren 1943)
Animal Crackers (Heerman 1930)
Five Card Stud (Hathaway 1968)
Samurai Rebellion (Kobayashi 1967)
2046 (Wong 2004)
The Lady Eve (Sturges 1941)
The Last Wave (Weir 1977)
Raining in the Mountain (Hu 1979)
*Inland Empire (Lynch 2006)
Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (Wolf 2008)

Y'all seen Cristi Puiu's Malmkrog? Holy shit. Three + hours of existentialist conversation in Transylvania.

WmC, that is a great (x) last movies

Hizzoner (McCarey, 1933)
Whom the Gods Destroy (Lang, 1934)
A Night on Bald Mountain (Parker & Alexeieff, 1933)
Vanity Street (Grinde, 1932)
Battling with Buffalo Bill (Taylor, 1931)
The Triumph of the Rat (Cutts, 1926)
The Return of the Rat (Cutts, 1929)
From Hell It Came (Milner, 1957)
Hello Baby! (McCarey, 1925)
Alice's Orphan (Disney, 1926)
Smith's Baby (Cline, 1926)

WmC, that is a great (x) last movies

― wasdnuos (abanana), Wednesday, May 5, 2021 10:39 AM (four days ago)

Thank you! I have been up to my eyeballs in dayjob and barjob so I've tried to make my limited movie time count more -- less mindless zero-calorie junk. Although Machine Gun McCain was pretty zero-calorie. Big ups to Stevie D. for the rec and the access to Funeral Parade of Roses.

a bunch of slides from the 19th century (Muybridge, Le Prince, etc.)
A Night on Bald Mountain (Alexeieff & Parker, 1933) an 8-minute animation that took 18 months to make
Ferdinand the Bull (Disney co., 1938)
Saludos Amigos (Disney co., 1942) 4/10
The Wind in the Willows (Disney co., 1949) 3/10 i probably saw this as a kid and forgot it
Vincent (Tim Burton, 1982)
Good Morning (Ozu, 1959) 6/10 my second ozu -- i need to watch more
In a Grove of a Black Cat a.k.a. Kuroneko (Kaneto Shindô, 1968) 8/10
Top of the Heap (1972) 6/10

Minari (Chung, 2020) 8/10
Disney-Sony's European Vacation (Watts, 2019) 6/10
My Octopus Teacher (2020) 4/10
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) 6/10
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021) 7/10
I May Destroy You (2020, ltd. series) 9/10
Frozen II (Disney co., Buck & Lee, 2019) 5/10

Nomadland
pretty moving film using a lot of real people in the minor roles.
NIce to see the geezer I wish they hadn't killed off in the Expanse outside of that series as one of the actual actors though.
Sad to hear that this si a lifestyle that people are being condemned to , though maybe iit is also about freedom.
I was heavily reminded of a scene from Fargo when the main protagonist gets up from peeing beside a fence in the middle of the open countryside with the remnants of snow still thawing on the ground. Then remembered that Frances McDormand played the police chief in that.

Sherpa
Documentary about Sherpas helping people climb Everest. My brother was talking about it a few weeks ago so I grabbed a copy. But only just got around to watching it. Fell asleep a couple of times but taht's probably just me at this time of night.
Quite moving. I think I must have read some weekend magazine articles on the subject possibly tied i with the film which was made or released in 2014. So had heard some of the story before.
Massive queues of people waiting to climb the mountain look like those photos of people crossing into the Yukon during the goldrush. & I've heard it's used as an office team building exercise which is definitely not the way it should be looked at.

Peppermint (2019?) Jennifer Garner plays a suburban mom whose husband and daughter are murdered by face-tatted cartel goons who are released thanks to judicial corruption. Fast forward five years and she's a dead-eyed MMA fighter and super-assassin hunting them and their bosses and everyone else involved in the case down. It's a remarkably dark version of this story; Garner shoots first without hesitation, she shows absolutely no mercy (she nails the judge's hands to his chair before blowing his whole house up with him in it) and genuinely doesn't seem to give a fuck if she dies while executing her plan. It's dumb as shit, but while it's running it's got impact and momentum.

Kiss The Blood Off My Hands (1948). An amazingly bleak noir with Burt Lancaster as a PTSD-damaged WWII veteran who accidentally kills a man in a London bar. Things go downhill from there. Lancaster dives deep into the character's psychosis; he's genuinely frightening throughout, at least partly because he's so much bigger and taller than anyone else onscreen.

The Ruling Class
Satire on the british aristocracy.
Harry Andrews hangs himself in an autoerotic game and his insane son who thinks he's jesus is brought outof the asylum he's been in .
Son is played by Peter O'Toole .
Have been wanting to see this since I was an early teen I think. My brother told me about it after he'd seen it on tv and I never got a chjance to see it on tv that I was aware of. I think I may have missed a showing over the last couple of years. I downloaded it about 10 years ago or something and the sound was way out of sync. So I found it unwatchable after a while. Not sure what promp[ted me to get it again recently but this is in sync so that's lovely for you.
Quite amusing, quite creepy. A bit white.
NOt sure if I've seen Peter O'Toole with long hair elsewhere, couldn't think of one while watching it. Obviouslky a wig anyway but still thought it odd.
Interesting to see Blackadder's Nursie in a support role here. Not sure where else she pops up at the time. time being 1972 . & it does have a large support cast of familiar faces.

I haven't been on here much, besides trawling the archives. As more theaters open and new movies are screened and seen in them again, I'll return, til then it's too grim, especially with Bill W gone. Here all the movies I watched in April.

The Seed of Man (Ferreri, 1969) - 9/10
Winchester ’73 (Mann, 1950) - 8/10
*Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (Fassbinder, 1975) - 10/10
The Big Chill (Kasdan, 1983) - 5/10
Narrowsburg (Shane, 2019) - 7/10
Dragon Inn (Hu, 1967) - 8/10
*Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai, 2003) - 10/10
The Swinging Cheerleaders (Hill, 1974) - 8/10
Bye Bye Monkey (Ferreri, 1978) - 10/10
Woman Times Seven (De Sica, 1967) - 8/10
As Tears Go By (Wong, 1988) - 9/10
Hill of Freedom (Hong, 2014) - 7/10
Nightmare Beach (Lenzi, 1989) - 9/10
Midnight Lace (Miller, 1960) - 8/10
The Ballad of Narayama (Kinoshita, 1958) - 8/10
Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959) - 8/10
*Vivre Sa Vie (Godard, 1962) - 10/10
The Mind Benders (Dearden, 1963) - 6/10
Absence of Malice (Pollack, 1981) - 5/10
Psychos in Love (Bechard, 1987) - 6/10
The Tall Target (Mann, 1951) - 7/10
Time Without Pity (Losey, 1957) - 5/10
*Fallen Angels (Wong, 1995) - 9/10
*Along the Polly (Hamburg, 2004) - 7/10
The Candy Snatchers (Trueblood, 1973) - 7/10
*Stray Dogs (Tsai, 2013) - 10/10
Nightmare City (Lenzi, 1980) - 6/10
The Pillow Book (Greenaway, 1996) - 8/10
Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018) - 7/10
Babette’s Feast (Axel, 1987) - 8/10
The Pajama Game (Abbot, Donen; 1957) - 7/10
VHYes (Robbins, 2019) - 7/10
Six in Paris (various, 1965) - 7/10 *Chabrol's, the last, is by far the best segment
Candy (Marquand, 1968) - 9/10
The Hot Touch (Vadim, 1981) - 6/10
The Gun Runners (Siegel, 1958) - 7/10
The Internecine Project (Hughes, 1974) - 8/10
Coogan’s Bluff (Siegel, 1968) - 6/10
Evils of the Night (Rustam, 1985) - 7/10
The Telephone Book (Lyon, 1971) - 8/10
*Made in U.S.A. (Godard, 1966) - 8/10
*Airplane! (ZAZ, 1980) - 10/10
Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (Lenzi, 1972) - 6/10
Le Pont du Nord (Rivette, 1981) - 8/10
Up the Down Staircase (Mulligan, 1967) - 9/10
Coup de Torchon (Tavernier, 1981) - 8/10
Yellow Sky (Wellman, 1948) - 8/10
Mystery of the Wax Museum (Curtiz, 1933) - 9/10
*This Man Must Die (Chabrol, 1969) - 8/10
Boarding Gate (Assayas, 2007) - 6/10
Le Doulos (Melville, 1962) - 8/10
Almost Human (Lenzi, 1972) - 7/10
Summertime (Lean, 1955) - 9/10
Hiding Out (Giraldi, 1987) - 3/10
Vanessa (Frank, 1977) - 5/10
Sacrifice! (Lenzi, 1974) - 8/10
History is Made at Night (Borzage, 1937) - 8/10
The Jerk (Reiner, 1979) - 5/10
*Modesty Blaise (Losey, 1966) - 8/10
That Cold Day in the Park (Altman, 1969) - 7/10
Slack Bay (Dumont, 2016) - 7/10
The Last Blockbuster (Morden, 2020) - 6/10
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (Greenbaum, 2021) - 6/10
*Morocco (von Sternberg, 1930) - 10/10
Django (Corbucci, 1966) - 9/10
Queer Japan (Kolbeins, 2019) - 7/10
Sensation Seekers (Weber, 1927) - 8/10
Crossfire (Dmytryk, 1947) - 7/10
Wonder Woman 1984 (Jenkins, 2020) - 3/10
eXistenZ (Cronenberg, 1999) - 8/10

Unhinged (Borte, Ellsworth 2020) 4/10
Forgotten Lady (Hart, Driskill, Fischer 1975) 5/10
Ishtar (Elaine May 1987) 4/10
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Ross, Ross 2020) 7/10
28 Weeks Later (Fresnadillo, Joffé, López-Lavigne, Olmo 2007) 4/10
The Stunt Man (Rush, Marcus, Brodeur 1979) 7/10 ⚰️
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (score-only version) (McQuarrie, Balfe 2018) 7/10
Flight (Zemeckis, Gatins 2012) 3/10
Smiley Face (Araki, Haggerty 2007) 7/10 🌲🌳
The Silencers (Karlson, Saul, Baker, Link, Levinson, after Hamilton 1966) 6/10
O.K. Connery / Operation Kid Brother (de Martino, Levi, Walker, Wright, Canzio 1967) 1/10
Another Round (Vinterberg, Lindholm 2020) 7/10
Extract (Judge 2009) 3/10
Guns Akimbo (Howden 2020) 3/10
The Wrong Arm of the Law (Owen, Antrobus, Galton, Simpson 1963) 7/10
Multiple Maniacs (Waters 1970) 6/10
2 Fast 2 Furious (Singleton, Thompson, Brandt, Haas 2003) 5/10
Nobody (Naishuller, Kolstad 2021) 8/10
Four Brothers (Singleton, Elliot, Lovett David 2005) 1/10
Cotton Comes To Harlem (Davis, Perl after Himes 1970) 8/10
Hustle & Flow (Craig Brewer 2005) 2/10
Wrath Of Man (Ritchie, Atkinson, Davies, after Boukhrief 2021) 6/10

Wipes (Miller, Wietmarschen 2020) 8 min
Green (Kylie Murphy 2021) 12 min
Gumdrop (Conran, Lawes 2012) 6 min
The Critic (Pintoff, Brooks 1963) 3min
La voz humana (Almodóvar 2020) 30 min, 8/10
Wonder (Javier Molina, Furman 2020) 11 min, 9/10
Shiny (Cloud Campos, Susser 2016) 4 min

Lilith (1964) 2/5
The Boxer's Omen (1983) 4/5
The Hot Rock (1972) 3.5/5
Easy Living (1937) 3.5/5
The Coward (1965) 5/5
Mayor (2020) 3.5/5
Tenet (2020) 2.5/5
The Night of Counting the Years (1965) N/A. Wanted to see this before it left Criterion but I couldn't really follow it all, and unlike with Tenet I think I was supposed to.
One False Move (1992) 4/5
Uptight (1968) 4/5
The Hero (1966) 4/5

Wonder (Javier Molina, Furman 2020) 11 min, 9/10

this is an egregious typo and was meant to be 0/10

So This Is Paris (Lubitsch, 1926)
let me come in (Morrison, 2021)
Pick Up (Gering, 1933)
Her Man (Garnett, 1930)
The Devil's Needle (Withey, 1916)
Godzilla Vs. Kong (Wingard, 2021)
Fiend Without a Face (Crabtree, 1958)
Getting Gertie's Goat (Sidney, 1924)
*The Garage (Arbuckle, 1920)

*King of New York (Ferrara, 1990) - 8/10
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Argento, 1970) - 8/10
Bay of Angels (Demy, 1963) - 7/10
Young Törless (Schlöndorff, 1966) - 7/10
Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2021) - 7/10
Death Game (Traynor, 1977) - 6/10
*La Rupture (Chabrol, 1970) - 9/10
Collective (Nanau, 2019) - 8/10
Magnificent Doll (Borzage, 1946) - 7/10
Flowers of Shanghai (Hou, 1998) - 8/10
The Cat O’ Nine Tails (Argento, 1971) - 8/10
*Les Biches (Chabrol, 1968) - 9/10
Rome 2072: The New Gladiators (Fulci, 1984) - 5/10
Three Comrades (Borzage, 1938) - 6/10
Doctor X (Curtiz, 1932) - 7/10
*La Pointe Courte (Varda, 1955) - 8/10
Dr. M (Chabrol, 1990) - 6/10
The Last Laugh (Murnau, 1924) - 8/10
Margin Call (Chandor, 2011) - 8/10
Black Mama, White Mama (Romero, 1973) - 7/10
Black Caesar (Cohen, 1973) - 6/10
Black Orpheus (Camus, 1959) - 9/10
The Kiss Before the Mirror (Whale, 1933) - 7/10
Eat Wheaties! (Abramovitch, 2021) - 5/10
Bloody Mama (Corman, 1970) - 6/10
*The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Buñuel, 1972) - 10/10
The Allnighter (Hoffs, 1987) - 7/10
The Song of Songs (Mamoulian, 1933) - 8/10
*The Phantom of Liberty (Buñuel, 1974) - 9/10
Black Coal, Thin Ice (Diao, 2014) - 8/10
That Obscure Object of Desire (Buñuel, 1977) - 9/10
La Belle Captive (Robbe-Grillet, 1983) - 9/10
The Opposite Sex (Miller, 1956) - 8/10
Days of Being Wild (Wong, 1990) - 8/10
The Great Silence (Corbucci, 1968) - 9/10
Seeking Asylum (Ferreri, 1979) - 9/10
Desperately Seeking Susan (Seidelman, 1985) - 6/10
*Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961) - 9/10
*Night and Fog (Resnais, 1956) - 10/10
*In a Year with 13 Moons (Fassbinder, 1978) - 10/10
*We Won’t Grow Old Together (Pialat, 1972) - 10/10
Black Demons (Lenzi, 1991) - 5/10
I Can’t Sleep (Denis, 1994) - 7/10
Memories of Murder (Bong, 2003) - 8/10
*Martha (Fassbinder, 1974) - 9/10
Spasmo (Lenzi, 1974) - 7/10
Flirtation Walk (Borzage, 1934) - 8/10

snap!

Better Luck Tomorrow (Lin, Marquez, Foronda 2002) 6/10
* Tokyo Drift (Lin, Morgan 2006) 6/10
The Paper Tigers (Tran 2021) 7/10
Spiral (Bousman, Rock, Stolberg, Goldfinger 2021) 2/10
Black Mama White Mama (Romero, Christian, Viola, Demme 1973) 7/10
Larger Than Life (Franklin, Densham, Williams, Blount Jr . 1996) 3/10
* Mission: Impossible (DePalma, Pollack, Zaillan, Koepp, Towne, et al 1996) 8/10

The Life Of The World To Come (Johnson 2010) 51 min
The Girl Who Couldn’t Come (Liu 2012) 8 min

hey now!

Sabotage (David Ayer, 2014): A grim 'n' gritty Old Man Schwarzenegger movie. AS plays the leader of a DEA commando squad that decides to steal $10 million from a cartel while busting them. When they go back to collect the money, it's gone, and/but members of the team are hunted down and murdered. Eventually, the killer is revealed...and it's Not Who You Expect. Schwarzenegger is great in it; some of the best acting of his career, but Mireille Enos is the real star of the show, as a member of the team who is dangerously insane, to say the least.

Zama (Martel): This was really cool
Voyage of the Rock Aliens: I recommend this if you like b-movie musicals like Rocky Horror, The Apple, etc.

May 2021

Cruel Story of Youth (Oshima, 1960) 8/10
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Yates, 1973) 8/10
*Escape from New York (Carpenter, 1981) 8/10
*Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958) 8/10
Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane McGowan (Temple, 2020) 7/10
Mayor (Osit, 2020) 8/10
One From The Heart (Copolla, 1982) 8/10
*The Outsiders (Copolla, 1983) 7/10
*Hard Boiled (Woo, 1992) 8/10
National Gallery (Wiseman, 2014) 6/10
*LA Confidential (Hanson, 1997) 8/10
*The Elephant Man (Lynch, 1980) 7/10
Drifters (Grierson, 1929) 8/10
The Club (Beresford, 1980) 8/10

The Virginian (Fleming, 1929)
The Lost Special (MacRae, 1932)
Unknown Blonde (Henley, 1934)
Devil and the Deep (Gering, 1932)
The Tong Man (Worthington, 1919)
Arabian Tights (Roach, 1933)
The Man in the Hat (Warbeck & Davidson, 2020)
King Kong Escapes (Honda, 1967)
*Mabel's Dramatic Career (Sennett, 1913)
*Dog Shy (McCarey, 1926)

Army of the Dead was...well, pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, right down to its 2 1/2 hour running time (Zack Snyder, y'know). Not a spoiler, really, but you know how you're supposed to tuck your pants into your boots when walking in tick-infested areas? Well, maybe when you're going to run through an army of zombies, you should wear a shirt with sleeves. Just a thought. Also, the dorks complaining that Tig Notaro looks excessively punched-in are only saying that because the movie's advance marketing material tipped them off that it happened. If they hadn't said anything about it, and the "story" was reduced to Chris D'Elia tweeting, "WTF? I was *in* that movie, I swear!", no one would have noticed because the whole goddamn thing is a CGI cartoon anyway. When 85% of your movie is green screen already, jumping that up to 87% is Not A Big Deal.

Signed up for HBO Max and finally watched The Conjuring, which I've been meaning to check out for a while. James Wan speaks the language of horror cinema better than almost anybody around right now; I expected lol70s cheese, but this thing is no-fucking-around scary. If you're in the mood for old-school horror (I strongly suspect more of the effects were practical than digital) with really good performances all around, especially Lili Taylor, it's kind of a must-see. The most genuinely frightening horror movie I've seen since Prince of Darkness.

The Kiss Before the Mirror (Whale, 1933)
Black Panthers (Varda, 1968)
Big Time Or Bust (Newfield, 1933)
The Woman Accused (Sloane, 1933)
Fighting With Kit Carson (Schaefer & Clark, 1933)
Saute Ma Ville (Akerman, 1968)
Riders of Justice (Jensen, 2020)
The Frozen Ghost (Young, 1945)
Do Me a Favor (Chase, 1922)
*An Eye for Figures (1920)