Last (x) movies you saw (II)

I’m not all that into the earliest silent films, except Safety Last! (1923) with Harold Lloyd, which i saw at the SF Silent Film festival with live organ accompaniment. But I really liked The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).

Thought Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, Part One (1922) was pretty good too, am looking forward to seeing Part Two

Burning, the Korean film, was very good

tru

#3 in the ILX film poll for 2018!

Oh cool

"Some Kind of Heaven" was pretty good, a lot more stylized and weird than I expected from a doc about a Florida retirement community. Riyl David Lynch, Wes Anderson and ... "Gates of Heaven"?

Liked "Sound of Metal" a lot. Of course it's (almost) all about Ahmed, but the film did feel like like it was telling a story I've not seen depicted before, despite some familiar beats.

The Assistant (6.0)
Waco (6.5)
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (7.0)
Studio 54 (7.0)
The Celluloid Closet (8.0)
Black Widow (6.0)
Small Axe (overall: 8.0)
Mr. Robot (all seasons: 7.0)
Housekeeping (6.5)
Gregory’s Girl (7.5)

I added some television in there. I was thinking that a parallel thread to this one for television might be useful in terms of checking what you saw over the year when the television poll comes up. That's how I'm able to put together a year-end movie list; I open up this thread and scan my posts for the year. I know some people use Letterboxd that way.

that's what i use the ten best shows thread for.
Your Ten Favorite Shows Currently on Television

I'll use that then. I like to rate stuff--seasons, entire runs, single episodes even--so I'll probably do that too.

look at me watching a lot of movies and enjoying some of them this month

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) 7/10
*The Lion King (1994) 8
*Toy Story (1995) 8
*Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019) 8
The Suitor (Etaix, 1962) 6
The Man Who Would Be King (Huston, 1975) 7
The Quiller Memorandum (1966) 5 great score tho
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) 6
Soul (2020) 8
The Parallax View (Pakula, 1974) 7
For a Few Dollars More (Leone, 1965) 7
The Spiral Staircase (1946) 6
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) 8
The Detective (1968) 6
Blast of Silence (1961) 8
Things to Come (1936) 7
Head of the Family (1996) 3
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) 5
*The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) 5
Runaway Train (Cannon Films, Konchalovsky, story by Kurosawa, 1985) 8
Always for Pleasure (Blank, 1978) 6 love the food sequence
Song of the South (yes the Disney one, 1946) 4
Sayat-Nova a.k.a. The Color of Pomegranates (Parajanov, 1969) 6

* (Well It's) The Taking of (the) Pelham 123 (1974) 4.5/5
Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (1975) 4/5
* To Be or Not to Be (1942) 4.5/5
The Last Movie (1971) 3/5
Tommaso (2019) 3/5
The Panama Papers (2018) 3/5
Time (2020) 3.5/5
Miami Blues (1990) 4/5
* Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) 4.5/5
Ham on Rye (2019) 3/5

If you want a doody rhyme then come see (the) me

The Bridge (Vidor, 1929)
Luxury Liner (Mendes, 1933)
Good Housewrecking (Sweet, 1933)
The Road to Reno (Wallace, 1931)
Under-Cover Man (Flood, 1932)
Peter Ibbotson (Hathaway, 1935)
The Signal Tower (Brown, 1924)
His Wooden Leg-Acy (1920)
*Mum's the Word (McCarey, 1926)

Les Visiteurs Du Soir

finally got to see this again . Tried to d/ld it and play it a few years ago but couldn't get the subtitles to work on the tv I was using at the time but this worked ok this time. Had a couple of glitches , words forming oddly on the screen for some reason getting wa ves and I'll not registering quite right.
BUt really good film, quite dark, funny in places, a little otherworldly. I don't know if they would be able to use dwarves in the same way now.
I kept looking at Gilles and thinking he looked like somebody I knew from a band but couldn't quite place him. Unless it was Bingo or something.
Saw this about 30 or 40 years ago. I think it was shown on tv at the time. I always remembered the bit where the recently arrived guest starts laughing then asks why everybody else who joined in was laughing. Struck me that taht actor might be a drag queen elsewhere in life but could have that totally wrong, teh mincing slimy nature of the character's moves or however else that is to be taken (hoping I'm not projecting somewhat iffy attitudes towards genderised movement cods I don't think they're hangups of mine). Anyway did really enjoy it so glad i finally got to again.
THink I might work through some more classic European films as I should have been doing for the last couple of decades. At some point I stopped watching subtitled European films for the main pat. Not sure why, possibly multitasking while doing things meaning I had to keep rewinding.

Any talk about Ham on Rye here or elsewhere? It’s... something.

Gunda was very special. I have thoughts, feel like i need to organize them though and i don't know if anyone would care to hear them?

xp I liked Ham on Rye. It made me think of the never-filmed original ending of Heathers, where the bombs blows up the school and everyone goes to prom in Hell.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz, Keighley; 1938) - 7/10
L’innocente (Visconti, 1976) - 7/10
Manhattan Baby (Fulci, 1982) - 7/10
Canal Zone (Wiseman, 1977) - 9/10
Barbarella (Vadim, 1968) - 8/10
The Bitch (O'Hara, 1979) - 7/10
*Shanghai Express (von Sternberg, 1932) - 10/10
*The Nice Guys (Black, 2016) - 9/10
Electra Glide in Blue (Guercio, 1973) - 7/10
Le Mariage de Chiffon (Autant-Lara, 1942) - 7/10
Fun with Dick and Jane (Kotcheff, 1977) - 7/10
The Black Cat (Fulci, 1981) - 8/10
*Popeye (Altman, 1980) - 9/10
Aenigma (Fulci, 1987) - 9/10
The River’s Edge (Dwan, 1957) - 8/10
State Legislature (Wiseman, 2006) - 10/10
*Chinese Roulette (Fassbinder, 1976) - 9/10
The Slumber Party Massacre (Jones, 1982) - 6/10
The Brute and the Beast (Fulci, 1966) - 7/10
The Thing from Another World (Nyby, 1951) - 7/10
Two Champions of Shaolin (Chang, 1980) - 7/10
The Hole (Tsai, 1998) - 10/10
Duel to the Death (Ching, 1983) - 9/10
*Alphaville (Godard, 1965) - 10/10
Soul Man (Miner, 1986) - 0/10
Chinese Portrait (Wang, 2018) - 9/10
*A Woman is a Woman (Godard, 1961) - 9/10
*Bamboozled (Lee, 2000) - 10/10
*The River (Tsai, 1997) - 10/10
Promising Young Woman (Fennell, 2020) - 2/10
*The Fugitive (Ford, 1947) - 8/10
Mr. Klein (Losey, 1976) - 9/10
*Dishonored (von Sternberg, 1931) - 10/10
Nancy Drew… Trouble Shooter (Clemens, 1939) - 6/10
*My Man Godfrey (La Cava, 1936) - 10/10
Get on the Bus (Lee, 1996) - 9/10
Voices from Beyond (Fulci, 1991) - 6/10
*On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong, 2017) - 8/10

So that Ham on Rye isn't the Bukowski origin story which I think was filmed a while back?

Ham on Rye is a promising first feature. Comparisons to Lynch seem off-base, not surprisingly. Maybe more of a Hal Hartley sensibility, with less dialogue.

Yeah, no relation to Bukowski. And only related to Lynch superficially, separate wavelength imo.

I watched it twice in a row last night. Not because I loved it, but because I wasn’t done reckoning with it. Made me uniquely uncomfortable, despite familiar ingredients. It’s beautifully, confidently made. I felt some new things.

I expect this guy to have some interesting things ahead of him.

All is Forgiven (Hansen-Love, 2007)
The Basilisks (Wertmuller, 1963)
My Sister's Good Fortune (Schanelec, 1995)

Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (Stoloff, 1934)
The Hurricane Express (McGowan & Schaefer, 1932)
Stolen by Gypsies; or Beer and Bicycles (Ray, 1933)
A Dangerous Woman (Lee & Grove, 1929)
The Woman Racket (Ober & Kelley, 1930)
The Fickle Spaniard (Griffith & Henderson, 1912)
The Bride’s Bereavement; or, The Snake in the Grass (Hill, 1932)
Rosita (Lubitsch, 1923)
The Pagan Lady (Dillon, 1931)
Earth Vs. the Spider (Gordon, 1958)
Just Rambling Along (Roach, 1918)
Father's Hatband (Brooke, 1913)
*Lizzies of the Field (Lord, 1924)

January:

The Brides of Fu Manchu (Sharp, 1966) 6/10 BLU-RAY
Death Walks on High Heels (Ercoli, 1971) 7/10 BLU-RAY
The Designated Victim (Lucidi, 1971) 6/10 DVD
Forbidden Games (Clement, 1952) 8/10 DVD
La Pluie (Projet Pour un Texte) (Broodthaers, 1969) 8/10 YOUTUBE
" . . . " Reel Five (Brakhage, 1998 10/10 YOUTUBE (awesome James Tenney score)
Hatchet for the Honeymoon (Bava, 1970) 7/10 YOUTUBE
Méditerranée (Pollet, Schlöndorff, 1963) 9/10 YOUTUBE (superb abstract essay short film that includes some almost unwatchable bullfighting footage)
Watch Me When I Kill (Bido, 1977) 6/10 DVD
The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (Summers,1967) 6/10 BLU-RAY
Angel Face (Preminger, 1953) 8/10 IPLAYER
Doctor Mordrid (Band, Band, 1992) 5/10 BLU-RAY
About Endlessness (Andersson, 2019) 9/10 MUBI
Threshold (Le Grice, 1972) 9/10 YOUTUBE
Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (Neill, 1943) 6/10 DVD
Amuck! (Amadio, 1972) 6/10 YOUTUBE
The Blood of Fu Manchu (Franco, 1968) 6/10 BLU-RAY
The Spider Woman (Neill, 1943) 6/10 DVD
The Pearl of Death (Neill, 1944) 6/10 DVD
The Woman in Green (Neill, 1945) 6/10 DVD
Pursuit to Algiers (Neill, 1945) 6/10 DVD
The Incident (Peerce, 1967) 7/10 BLU-RAY
Mangrove (McQueen, 2020) 6/10 IPLAYER
Dragon Inn (King Hu, 1967) 9/10 BLU-RAY
Sherlock Holmes in Washington (Neill, 1943) 5/10 DVD
Dressed to Kill (Neill, 1946) 5/10 DVD
Mothra (Honda, 1961) 8/10 BLU-RAY
Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (Clemens, 1974) 6/10 BLU-RAY
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (Neill, 1942) 5/10 DVD

East of Fifth Avenue (Rogell, 1933)
Lazybones (Powell, 1934)
Thirty-Day Princess (Gering, 1934)
His Private Secretary (Whitman, 1933)
A Cottage on Dartmoor (Asquith, 1929)
The Black Scorpion (Ludwig, 1957)
Vamping Babies (1926)
Easy Payments (Beaudine, 1919)
*The Count (Chaplin, 1916)

Tony Conrad, DreaMinimalist (Losier, 2008)
The Golf Specialist (Brice, 1930)
This Happy Breed (Lean, 1944)
Sanshiro Sugata (Kurosawa, 1943)
Sanshiro Sugata, Part 2 (Kurosawa, 1945)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978)
The Eloquent Peasant (Salam, 1970)
Images (Altman, 1972)
Wonder Woman 1984 (Jenkins, 2020)
The Tenant (Polanski, 1976)
The Chase (Ripley, 1946)
The Baker's Wife (Pagnol, 1938)
Kill List (Wheatley, 2011)
I'm Your Woman (Hart, 2020)
The Headless Woman (Martel, 2008)
Youth of the Beats (Suzuki, 1958)
Never Let Go (Guillerman, 1960)
The Morning After (Lumet, 1986)
Lines of the Hand (Maddin, 2015)
The Rabbit Hunters (Maddin, Johnson, Johnson, 2020)
The Silent Partner (Duke, 1978)
Sea Countrymen (De Seta, 1954)
Lola, 15 (Reeder, 2017)
Shuvit (Reeder, 2017)
Riot in Cell Block 11 (Siegel, 1954)

Night Stalker (6.0)
Flack (S1--5.0)
Looking for Mr. Goodbar (7.5)
The Last Days of Disco (6.5)
The Killers (Don Siegel version--6.5)
Blackboard Jungle (6.0)
Prêt-à-Porter (3.0)
In the Cut (6.0)
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (7.5)
American Swing (6.0)

I'll continue to put the occasional TV series here--I only watch 10-15 shows a year.

Sorry if all the rewatches are annoying.

The Adjuster (1991) 4/5.
The Cameraman (1928) 4/5
Nationtime (1972) 3/5
* Vendredi soir (Friday Night)(2002) 4/5
Starman (1984) 3/5
* Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) 4/5. This one feels like more of a gem as time has gone by.
* Bad Lieutenant (1992) 4/5
* The Big Sleep (1946) 4.5/5
* Fat City (1972) 4.5/5
Human Highway (1982) 3/5. Had mostly just seen the noisy and sublime Neil Young/Devo jam before.
* Wolf of Wall Street 4.5/5
Starstruck (1982) 3.5/5. Thought this was going to be annoying but it won me over. Very breezy and poppy viewing, if that's what you want.
Chinese Roulette (1976) 3.5/5

had the same thought about ghost dog after a rewatch last week. i didnt really rate it when it came out but it felt a lot stronger this time.

Grizzly Man (2005) 4/5
Mad Love (1935) 4/5
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) 4/5
We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011) 2/5
Wild Strawberries (1957) 5/5
Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai (1999) 3/5
A Serious Man (2009) 4/5
The Laughing Policeman(1973) 2/5
Dishonored(1931) 4/5
Con Air (1997) 8/5
Town Bloody Hall (1979) 3/5

Mad Love was a great surprise, hadnt heard of it before, terrific direction & atmosphere and a legit performance by Peter Lorre, v spooky

tenet (nolan, 2020) 5/10
titicut follies (wiseman, '67) 8/10
*enemy (villeneuve, 2013) 7/10
ismael's ghosts (desplechin, 2017) 5.5/10
olympic dreams (jeremy teicher, 2020) 9/10
the vanishing of sidney hall (shawn christensen, 2018) 4/10
not carol (eamon harrington & john watkin, 2019) 8/10
never rarely sometimes always (hittman, 2020) 9/10
north by northwest (hitchcock '59) 10/10
serenity (steven knight, 2019) 2/10
blood relatives (chabrol, '78) 3.5/10
bloody nose, empty pockets (ross bros, 2020) 10/10
zeroville (franco, 2019) 2/10
the last thing he wanted (rees, 2020) 1/10
i love you, beth cooper (columbus, '09) 7.5/10
samui song (ratanaruang, 2018) 5/10

Toy Story 4 (2019) 6/10
Heathers (1988) 5
*Clue (1985) 5

criterion channel
Holiday (Cukor, 1938) cary grant does a somersault, 8/10
Indiscreet (Kramer, 1958) 4/10 a snooze
The Black Cat (Ulmer, 1939) 6/10
Blind Alley (1939) 5/10
Make Way for Tomorrow (McCarey, 1937) 8/10
Primary (Drew, 1960) 5/10
Klute (Pakula, 1971) 7/10
Bamboozled (Lee, 2000) 3/10
Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010) 7/10
You Only Live Once (Lang, 1937) a high 7/10
The Mouse That Roared (Arnold, 1959) 6/10
The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) 6/10 lost a point because of the ending speech

more of a cartwheel, actually

Dream Castle (von Bolvary, 1933)
Stage Struck (Dwan, 1925)
Ladies Should Listen (Tuttle, 1934)
Running Wild (La Cava, 1927)
The Three Musketeers (Schaefer & Clark, 1933)
Underground (Asquith, 1928)
The Black Balloon (Safdie & Safdie, 2012)
Recaptured Love (Adolfi, 1930)
Help Wanted, Female (Ceder, 1931)
Trader Mickey (Hand, 1932)
King Klunk (Lantz & Nolan, 1933)
*The Invisible Man (Whale, 1933)
*Cook, Papa, Cook (MacDonald, 1928)
*Fatty and Mabel Adrift (Arbuckle, 1916)

Cop Car (Watts, 2015) - 3/10
The Baron of Arizona (Fuller, 1950) - 8/10
Chop Shop (Bahrani, 2007) - 6/10
*Le Boucher (Chabrol, 1970) - 9/10
*Postcards from the Edge (Nichols, 1990) - 6/10
Deep Red (Argento, 1975) - 6/10
Red Road (Arnold, 2007) - 8/10
*Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994) - 10/10
*The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich, 1971) - 10/10
Zombi 3 (Fulci, 1988) - 6/10
Man Hunt (Lang, 1941) - 8/10
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Schlöndorff, von Trotta; 1975) - 9/10
*Forty Guns (Fuller, 1957) - 9/10
El Cochecito (Ferreri, 1960) - 9/10
SexWorld (Spinelli, 1977) - 7/10
*Fort Apache (Ford, 1948) - 10/10
The Lost Weekend (Wilder, 1945) - 9/10
*Bad Lieutenant (Ferrara, 1992) - 9/10
Portrait of Jennie (Dieterle, 1948) - 9/10
Who’s Who (Leigh, 1979) - 7/10
*Contempt (Godard, 1963) - 7/10
*Blue Collar (Schrader, 1978) - 9/10
*Beware of a Holy Whore (Fassbinder, 1971) - 9/10
Late August, Early September (Assayas, 1998) - 8/10
Bad Girl (Borzage, 1931) - 8/10
Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Martino, 1972) - 8/10
*The Unfaithful Wife (Chabrol, 1969) - 8/10
Intermezzo (Molander, 1936) - 7/10
Angel Face (Preminger, 1953) - 7/10
Xala (Sembène, 1975) - 8/10
Summer Night, with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil (Wertmüller, 1986) - 8/10
*Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong, 2015) - 9/10
*Murder-Rock: Dancing Death (Fulci, 1984) - 9/10

January

Johnny Mnemonic (Longo, Gibson 2021)
Small Axe: Mangrove (McQueen, Siddons 2020)
* Ghost World (Zwigoff, Clowes 2001)
Small Axe: Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen, Courttia Newland 2020)
* It Follows (Mitchell 2014)
* Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Dante, Haas 1990)
Small Axe: Red, White And Blue (Steve McQueen, Courttia Newland 2020)
Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap (Ice-T, Baybutt 2012)
Small Axe: Alex Wheatle (McQueen, Siddons 2020)
Secret Honor (Altman, Freed, Stone 1984)
Blood Bath (Jack Hill, Stephanie Rothman 1966)
She Dies Tomorrow (Amy Seimetz 2020)
Slumber Party Massacre II (Deborah Brock 1987)
Love & Basketball (Gina Prince-Bythewood 2000)
Storefront Hitchcock (Demme 1996)
Big Eyes (Burton, Alexander, Karaszewski 2014)
Baby Done (Curtis And Sophie 2021)

sorting movies by the year they are set in, nice

https://scifiinterfaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/jm-1-internet-2021.png

i just saw booksmart and loved it

i was shocked it only cost $6M to make! that would have been low-budg in the 90s. according to IMDB it made its money back in the first weekend so i hope we see beanie feldstein (!!!!!) in more - she is just outstanding. everyone was good though

the stylized reality of it and underlying sweetness remind me a lot of Sex Education

seriously, one of the great high school movies imo

the airport scene at the end really got me. it is crazy how these intense, life-molding relationships just stop, if not completely then transformed beyond recognition, and it literally happens in like one second. you go away for the summer and then you're off to whatever else. it's all over. don't let college fuck you up.

booksmart is elevated by the lead performances for sure; both those women are at the start of great careers.

Artemnis Fowl
though dropped off in the middle of it last night. kenneth branagh has pretty much bowlderised the film of a book I quite enjoyed. Actually enjoyed it enough to read through several of teh series and read a couple of the author's more adult books.
So the film is no longer about an overachieving criminal mastermind and now about a precocious teen who is looking to rescue his father.
Though they do refer to the criminal mastermind at one point towards the end.
I'd been intrigued from having read the books but I don't think it lives up to expectations. So wonder if it will be a standalone. Released at a weird time which is likely to go against it too isn't it?

I don't know what Branagh is doing with his current movies. I tried watching one of his Poirot movies and it was awful. and I like his Hamlet quite a lot.

Nomadland was ... OK. But I kept thinking back to "Wendy and Lucy" the whole time.

JUdas and the Black Messiah
Really enjoyed it.
Told from the perspective of the guy who's been blackmailed into spying on Fred Hampton and his branch of teh Black panthers. But showing the flaws in that a lot better than mario van peebles Panther which seemed to make way too much of an excuse for Cointelpro which destroyed teh movement.
Thought it really good though i did think that the actor playing Fred Hampton might be a bit short. or am I right in thinking he was really tall?
Has a lot of recognisable ypoung black faces from both sides of teh Atlantic in . I hope it stands for a while.

& this which is on film because of the pandemic but is pretty moving whatever
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPJYWmxHpK8
but would be a stage performance otherwise.
3 enslaved women who Dr Sims is practising gynaecology on tell their story. Alonside a white ndentured servant.

(xpost) Meaning it felt like a lesser version? I've been anxious to see it for months, but it still hasn't opened here (and theatres are still closed--should reopen soon).

Gambling Ship (Marcin & Gasnier, 1933)
Singapore Sue (Robinson, 1932)
Blood and Sand (Niblo & Arzner, 1922)
A Connecticut Yankee (Butler, 1931)
One Heavenly Night (Fitzmaurice, 1930)
Don Q Son of Zorro (Crisp, 1925)
The Invisible Man Returns (May, 1940)
A Fraternity Mixup (Pembroke, 1926)
*The High Sign (Keaton & Cline, 1921)

xpost Yeah, a lesser version. Weirdly, though I was the only one that had seen "Wendy and Lucy," all of us actually felt "Nomadland" fell short of its reputation.

It was on Hulu here, fwiw.