Last (x) movies you saw (II)

* Thief (1981) 4.5/5
The Twentieth Century (2019) 3/5. Feature debut of new Canadian Guy Maddin imitator.
Barbarella (1968) 2.5/5
Ishtar (1987) 3.5/5
Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock n Roll (2014) 3.5/5
* A New Leaf (1971) 4/5
* The Sword of Doom (1966) 4.5/5

*The Night Porter (Cavani, 1974) - 9/10
Clash by Night (Lang, 1952) - 9/10
*Ici et Ailleurs (Godard, Miéville, Gorin; 1976) - 10/10
*La Grande Bouffe (Ferreri, 1973) - 10/10
Beanpole (Balagov, 2019) - 7/10
*Despair (Fassbinder, 1978) - 5/10
*One Day Since Yesterday (Teck, 2014) - 8/10
The Front (Ritt, 1976) - 7/10
The Informer (Ford, 1935) - 8/10
Lola (Demy, 1961) - 7/10
*Rolling Thunder (Flynn, 1977) - 9/10
*The Piano Teacher (Haneke, 2001) - 10/10
The Draughtsman’s Contract (Greenaway, 1982) - 8/10
The Tin Star (Mann, 1957) - 8/10
*The Image Book (Godard, 2018) - 10/10
The Docks of New York (von Sternberg, 1928) - 9/10
The Lovers on the Bridge (Carax, 1991) - 9/10
The Man with the Golden Arm (Preminger, 1955) - 7/10
The Ballad of Narayama (Imamura, 1983) - 7/10
The Women (Cukor, 1939) - 9/10
*Role Models (Wain, 2008) - 8/10
Ladybug Ladybug (Perry, 1963) - 9/10
She’s Funny That Way (Bogdanovich, 2014) - 7/10
Cat Ballou (Silverstein, 1965) - 8/10
Alice (Allen, 1990) - 6/10
Céline and Julie Go Boating (Rivette, 1974) - 10/10
Mr. Majestyck (Fleischer, 1974) - 6/10
The Eagle and the Hawk (Walker, Leisen; 1933) - 8/10
Advise & Consent (Preminger, 1962) - 8/10
Round Midnight (Tavernier, 1986) - 8/10

MLK/FBI
not sure what distribution this documentary has yet since this tied in with an interview with the director Sam pollard.
It was streamed on a service from the US that allowed me to watch it in Ireland which was good
Pretty good I think, focusing on the FBI surveillance/harassment of the great human rights leader as the title suggests.

March:

Whisky Galore! (Mackendrick, 1949) 8/10 DVD
Witchcraft (Sharp, 1964) 6/10 YOUTUBE
Night Tide (Harrington, 1961) 8/10 MUBI
The Woman Who Ran (Hong, 2020) 8/10 MUBI
*The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (Leone, 1966) 9/10 BLU-RAY
Murder, My Sweet (Dmytryk, 1944) 7/10 DVD
The Shiver of the Vampires (Rollin, 1971) 8/10 BLU-RAY
The Child (Voskanian, 1977) 7/10 BLU-RAY
The Woman in Black (Wise, 1989) 8/10 BLU-RAY (screenplay by Nigel Kneale; disc includes an entertaining commentary by Gatiss, Newman and Nyman)
Four Sided Triangle (Fisher, 1953) 7/10 BLU-RAY (extra on the Region B Curse of Frankenstein Blu-Ray/DVD set)
Casino Royale (Huston, Parrish et al, 1967) 4/10 DVD
Modesty Blaise (Losey, 1966) 5/10 DVD
The Green Man (Day, 1956) 6/10 TALKING PICTURES TV
*The Brood (Cronenberg, 1979) 9/10 DVD
The Hands of Orlac (Weine, 1924) 7/10 MUBI
The Blue Angel (von Sternberg, 1930) 9/10 DVD
Visiting Hours (Lord, 1982) 6/10
The House on Sorority Row (Rosman, 1982) 6/10

DVD
BLU-RAY

First time back in theaters tonight!

The Assistant was brutal: a horror movie where patriarchy is the monster and even your parents are implicit in your eventual acceptance of the trauma you'll need to accept.

Oh I saw the assistant last night as well! Not in a theatre tho. Just the first 10 minutes of menial office work was anxiety inducing. Offering someone a Kleenex as a dehumanising act. Leaning on the back of a chair becomes a punch in the gut.

oh yeah, i had a bunch of anxiety freakout throughout, especially the HR scene tho

my friend pointed out that almost every scene has her cramped into the frame, everything feels claustrophobic and squeezed

even the sound design is claustrophobic, a bunch of bullshit office conversations pushing everything else out of the way.

HR scene was too real

big hug mug

the xerox machine's deafening grumble as images of women are spit out and erased over and over again

So I should really check out that Ackerman movie that everyone is comparing this to, right?

Promising Young Woman? I am extremely wary of it at best.

Promising Young Ackerwoman

pls do not associate akerman and promising young woman in any way

Watched most of the four-hour Tom Petty documentary over the last couple of nights. It was good, but Dan Zanes' book was actually more informative.

okay clearly not PYW, what Ackerman film is the comparison?

Minera (7.0)
My Salinger Year (6.0)
L.A. Confidential (7.0)
First Cow (6.5)
Color of Night (1.0)
Playing God (4.0)
Chloe (6.0)
Eye for an Eye (5.5)
Audrey (6.5)
A Simple Plan (7.0)

Jeanne Dielman is the Ackerman that everyone seems to be comparing to The Assistant.

Seinfeld seasons 6 through 9 iirc

Cenere (Mari, 1917)
Pretty Ladies (Bell, 1925)
The Last Frontier (Bennet & Storey (1932)
The Kid From Spain (McCarey, 1932)
The Long Good Friday (Mackenzie, 1980)
The Undead (Corman, 1957)
The Flying Coffer (Reiniger, 1921)
The Secret of the Marquise (Reiniger, 1922)
The Adventures of Dr. Dolittle: The Lion’s Den (Reininger, 1928)
The Luck o’ the Foolish (Edwards, 1924)
The Tramp (Chaplin, 1915)

Minera (7.0)

Should read Minari...

MInari was ... good, but felt like it was missing something. It's a good story, but felt like needed or deserved a slightly longer running time.

That said, I think there are a lot things this movie does differently and better than expected.

Mank was not good, all flourish and no dive. My partner, who had not seen Kane and had no frame of reference for any of the story, found it mystifyingly boring.

^watched it in the theater and was surprised at how murky and dark it was, even in sunlight. Maybe i had a shitty projectionist?

My partner, who had not seen Kane

!

(just surprised, not personally outraged or anything)

she's not really a "movie person," and hasn't really seen any welles at all.

it's an interesting thought exercise to try to imagine watching Mank and having no frame of reference for what the fuck is going on; all you get is people telling Oldman what a fuckin' genius he is and tons of snappy dialogue

My partner, who had not seen Kane

I find this kind of thing both sort of understandable (there are a lot of movies, and more and more old movies every day), but also fascinating, because this is most consistent "greatest movie of all time" movie and, being that there is just one of those, you'd think that alone would compel a viewing. Then again, I'm always mystified when I read the sales numbers of lots of great albums, like stuff from the VU, or Big Star, or even something like the Sex Pistols, who essentially have just one album, one of the most written and talked about albums of all time, and still, in 2021, have only sold something like 1.3 million copies of that album. Which is a lot, but I would have thought more people than that would have bought it out of curiosity, or even accidentally, over the course of 45 years.

But (xpost) per that, I know my wife and one of her friends saw "The Disaster Artist," having never seen or even heard of "The Room." I know they enjoyed it, and it is enjoyable, but I still kind of wondered how it ended up on their radar and why that one was, like, the one movie they chose to see in a theatre that year.

Finally saw The Sounds of Metal.. great film, and not what I was expecting at all. It's not really about metal.

this is most consistent "greatest movie of all time" movie

I thought it had been overtaken in this by Vertigo (which I have never seen). I saw Kane about 35 years ago and did not exactly have a Saul-of-Tarsus experience with it. "That was...fine, I guess" probably sums it up.

Vertigo is definitely its closest competitor, but I bet Kane still ends up on top more frequently.

I think that status probably makes it more forbidding and less interesting to many people, in the same way that Moby-Dick is generally recognized as one of the greatest English language novels & frequently cited yet hardly widely read. I don't think it's far off to say that cinema, and a totem like Kane, is in a similar place--I can't imagine anyone being compelled, unless otherwise inclined, by the Sight & Sound poll.

But you also can't overstate the lack of interest in black and white movies, "old" movies.

I don't really think there's a 'greatest film of all time' anymore. It might have been CK at one time, but we're now into a hundred years of film, and it's all over the place and I don't know if we can reach a universal consensus like that anymore.

Remember: Indian films have an average of 9 musical number per film, and CK has none.

-- I thought it had been overtaken in this by Vertigo

-- Vertigo is definitely its closest competitor, but I bet Kane still ends up on top more frequently.

S&S aside, I'd say Kane is still the de facto collective #1, as reflected in the TSPDT rankings.

That being said, anyone with a pony in that race should submit a ballot here (ignore the title, the deadline is now TBD):

ILX All-Time Film and Morbsies Poll: Voting And Campaigning Thread (Ballots Due Like I Dunno Maybe March 1, 2021?)

Books, though, take effort. Movies take, more or less, two hours, and for most those those two hours can be spent largely sitting on your couch, eating snacks and playing with on your phone, with occasional pauses. It's never been easy to read "Moby Dick." It's never been easier to watch "Citizen Kane." Whether or not someone enjoys it is a different matter entirely, but it's not like it's a particularly big ask, beyond "black and white and old."

* 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