Last (x) movies you saw

i dont think id want to see Inception again, i enjoyed it in the cinema but i bet it would suck if i saw it again

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1976) 4/5

An odd movie but brilliant. sloppy yet so naturalistic. what was up with that strip joint? who would pay money to go to a place like that? i wasnt even dissapointed by the unresolved ending.

Chronicle (Trank, 2012) 2/5

This had its moments but the whole found footage thing became annoying and overly contrived after a while.

A History of Violence (Cronenberg, 2005) 3.5/5

This is my second time watching this and the comic book style in which he dispatches people is like something from a different movie. Neverthless, the rest of the movie is well done and its a great story.

One Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Ceylan, 2011) - 3/5
Le Quai Des Brunes (Marcel Carne, 1939) - 442399777201/5.*
Pepe Le Moko (julien Duvivier, 1937) - ((332937010-1)/83759275020)/5
Alice in the Cities (Wim Wenders, 1974) - 83649142421-489-14-1248-124-24-12-124-1248-248-184-184/////5
Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987) - hfahejwgqoje83-2-1u/5**
Xala - (Sembene, 1975) - 6746293419/78
While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956) - xxxxxxx/5
Ashes of Time (Wong Kar-wai, 1994)***

* = the Gabin retrospective was a good opportunity to make my way through French film in the 40s, really liking it so far. They are great date films, despite the somewhat tragic endings, but who cares about endings?
** = This was a Wenders dbl bill and I guess you can map what happened to Euro art cinema from this.
*** = possibly Kar-wai's best film.

aw it's his prettiest film, visually, but far from his best i think. i found it pretty trying, though'd concede some of that's my tastes; i prefer all of hou's modern stuff to his historical epics

have to admit I had a hard time staying awake during Ashes of Time.

The Pornographers
Coriolanus
Man of the West
Wild Reeds

ashes of time redux screening i attended was improved considerably by christopher doyle galloping on stage uninvited, after, & pulling mic from MC

I often have a hard time staying awake during slow cinema screenings and I also feel this is part of the pleasure I get from this kind of cinema. Although I saw Ashes of Time at 11pm last night, no problems. Looks incredible, even by kar-wai/Doyle's very high standards.

Today, at the cinema: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp: very moving, "very much".

La Religieuse
Duelle
L'Amor Fou

Keeping the apparently seriously ill Rivette in my thoughts this week. Sad.

ashes of time redux screening i attended was improved considerably by christopher doyle galloping on stage uninvited, after, & pulling mic from MC

― blossom smulch (schlump)

this reminds me of the q&a after the fallen angels premiere at the berlinale. wong kar wai was asked why the camera was so shaky all the time, and he replied, well, the cameraman was drunk. everybody laughed. wkw looked quizzically at the interpreter, the interpreter shrugged.

Downhill (Hitchcock, 1927) 3/5
Frankenstein (J. Searle Dawley, 1910) 3/5
The Darkest Hour (Chris Gorak, 2011) 2/5
28 Weeks Later (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007) 3/5
Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012) 4/5
Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011) 1.5/5
Lucifer Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1972) 1.5/5
The Designated Victim (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 1971) 2.5/5

Haven't done one of these for a few weeks:

21 Jump Street (Phil Lord, Chris Miller, 2011) 3.5/5
Shame (Steve McQueen) 4/5
The Green Man (Robert Day, 1956) 3.5/5
Slade in Flame (Richard Loncraine, 1975) 4/5
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher, 2011) 4.5/5
The Debt (John Madden, 2011) 3/5
The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011) 3/5
Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957) 4/5
Resistance (Amit Gupta, 2011) 2.5/5
Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012) 4/5
Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1967) 4/5

Ghost Dog (Jim Jarmusch, 1999) 3.5/5 - A bad comedy made bearable by beautiful cinematography and a kick-ass soundtrack.
Social Network (David Fincher, 2010) 4/5 - Magnificently competent.
Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995) 4/5 - Pretty good despite iffy pacing
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Adam Curtis, 2011) 4.5/5 - The kind of documentary that is entirely absorbing even thought it may well all be fiction.
Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974) 4/5 - lol bulgy eyes

New Adam Curtis?!

not that new, I saw it... last fall?

Days of Being Wild (1991, Wong Kar-wai) 4/5
Django Kill ... If You Live, Shoot! (1967, Giulio Questi) 3/5
Kicking and Screaming (1995, Noah Baumbach) 3/5
Oslo, August 31st (2011, Joachim Trier) 3/5
The Color Wheel (2011. Alex Ross Perry) 3/5
Hide Away (2011, Chris Eyre) 2/5
Pink Ribbons, Inc. (2011, Lea Pool) 3/5
Passion Fish (1992, John Sayles) 4/5
Thundercrack! (1975, Curt McDowell) 3/5
Two Tons of Turquoise to Taos Tonight (1975/2011?, Robert Downey Sr) 3/5

Passion Fish is such a great movie

not quite, but it stands up very well. Had forgotten the "anal probe" actress monologue.

"i didnt ask for an anal probe!"....isnt that line uttered by someone in 'Communion' also?

The last few weeks, almost all rep & netflix (haven't disturbed the personal collection much as of late):

Come Back To The Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982, Robert Altman) 3.5/5
Reality Bites (1994, Ben Stiller) 3/5 (would have been a 2, but added a point for Winona--you forget how purely engaging she was in her prime(and also because that doily dress on the big screen will not be easily forgotten))
Walking and Talking (1996, Nicole Holofcener) 4/5 (one of the best films showing the true dynamics of friendship)
Pardners (1956, Norman Taurog) 3/5 (cool prologue)
Hollywood or Bust (1956, Frank Tashlin) 3/5 (cool Chrysler)
Film (1965, Alan Schneider) 3.5/5
Play of The Week: "Waiting For Godot" (1961, Alan Schneider) 3/5 (Burgess Meredith & Zero Mostel as the leads, but overall kind of a slog seeing it all at once)
Lovely & Amazing (2002, Nicole Holofcener) 3.5/5
Shame (2011, Steve McQueen) 3/5 (didn't find this boring; funny if anything, even when it wasn't supposed to be)
Haywire (2011, Steven Soderbergh) 3.5/5 (Fun!)
David Holzman's Diary (1967, Jim McBride) 4.5/5

so hard to correlate nicole holofcener films w/the titles of nicole holofcener films & remember which i've seen. walking & talking sounds good.

love crime (2010, corneau) 3/5
full moon in paris (1984, rohmer) 4.5/5
who'll stop the rain (1978, reisz) 4/5
what happened was... (1994, noonan) 4/5
suzanne's career (1963, rohmer) 3/5
hemingway & gelhorn (2012, kaufman) 2/5
moonrise kingdom (2012, wes anderson) 2.5/5
that's my boy (2012, sean anders) 1.5/5

American Graffiti (Lucas, '73) 2.5/5
Nightwatch (Ole Bornedal, '98) 3/5
Haywire (Soderbergh, '11) 3.5/5
The Wicker Tree (Robin Hardy, '11) 1.5/5
There Will Be Blood (PTA, '07) 3.5/5
Equilibrium (Kurt Wimmer, '02) 1.5/5
Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, '11) 4/5

guys, the whole point of 5-star scale is you don't get to use halves.

decimals?

i am legit gonna start using π/5

Prometheus (3/5)
Reservoir Dogs (4/5)
Pull My Daisy (4/5)

Klute the Jane Fonda/Donald Sutherland detective yarn from the early 70s.
He almost monk like, she a callgirl who's seen better days & is now trying to break into acting.
Cinematography is pretty awesome, and dialogue sounds like its too good to be real. Maybe too much Dorthy Parker or something, I just don't know if people really have the wit to talk like that. Not sure if it even sounds artificial, just possibly too noticeable.

Great late noir.

Saw a few bits of Klute last night - the passages where Fonda was talking about her life as a call girl -- and who she thinks is 'on top' -- strangely (or maybe not so strangely) pre-date the 'call girl diary' claptrap.

Some of this overlaps with Godard (and Fonda was doing work with the Vertov group at that time), so I wish I was paying more attention.

Mauvis Sang (1986) 3/5
The Harder They Come (1972) 2.5/5
Moonrise Kingdom (2012) 4/5
The Avengers (2012) 3/5
Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns (2003) 2.5/5
Kiss Me Deadly (1955; 2nd viewing) 4.5/5
Routine Pleasures (1986) 3/5
Divorce, Italian Style (1961) 4/5

crazy, stupid, love (ficarra, requa 2011) 1/5
the birds (hitchcock '63) 4/5
and the pursuit of happiness (malle '86) 4/5
phenomena (argento '85) 1.5/5
a good marriage (rohmer '82) 3/5
basket case (henenlotter '82) 3.5/5
safe men (john hamburg '98) 1.5/5

oh i also saw

green fish (lee chang-dong '97) 4/5
the innocents (jack clayton '61) 2.5/5

John Carter (Andrew Stanton, 2012) 2/5
Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005) 4/5
Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012) 4/5
The Black Balloon (Elisa Down, 2008) 3/5
The Rocky Road To Dublin (Peter Lennon, 1968) 5/5
To Live And Die In LA (William Friedkin, 1985) 4/5
Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011) 3.5/5

Dance, Girl, Dance (Arzner, 1940) 2/5 (D-)
Chronicle (Trank, 2012) 4/5 (B+)
Rampart (Moverman, 2011) 4/5 (B+)
Dick (Fleming, 1999) 3/5 (C+)
Creative Nonfiction (Dunham, 2009) 4/5 (B-)
Tiny Furniture (Dunham, 2010) 3/5 (C)
The Ides of March (Clooney, 2011) 4/5 (B)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (Shatner, 1989) 2/5 (D)
Cars 2 (Lasseter and Lewis, 2011) 2/5 (D-)
The Incredible Shrinkng Man (Arnold, 1957) 4/5 (B-)
The China Syndrome (Bridges, 1979) 4/5 (B)

Burma Soldier biography of a normal ranking soldier in the Burmese army who had been in a unit mapping the locations of landmines and blown up. Talked about how the higher ranks had ordered the use of villagers as (I think) unpaid porters and human shields.

After the accident the protaganist became an activist speaking out about the system he had been part of which got him in serious trouble with that system.

Interesting fact thrown up as background is that Ne Win supposedly the Burmese socialist leader at one point devalued all currency not divisible by the number 9. I need to find out more about him but he seems to have been the leader of the native freedom fighting in WWII. once he came to power in 1962 he made his own ethnic group centrally powerful. I think there are 18 main ethnicities in Burma and there has been a lot of oppression of ethnicities since that point.

Burma sounds like its seriously messed up, especially since its thought by some that getting outside investment in the prevailing regime is going to cut down on atrocities. I really need to find out what the best material to read on the country is since it does sound atrocious and has been so for the last 50 years plus.

Into The Family played for a couple of days and am glad I caught it -- bloody marvelous.

Wanna see this, though who knows whel I'll get a chance

Will watch Magic Mike and the Wes Anderson this weekend.

In the last week:

Eyes of Laura Mars
We Need To Talk About What a Terrible Movie Kevin Is
On Dangerous Ground

On We Need To Talk...

Everyone seems to hate this with the exception of Walter Chaw, often my most trusted critic. He compares Ramsey to Arbus on film.

John Carter (2011): C+
The Thing (1982): A-
Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974): C-
Prometheus (2012): B-
Moonrise Kingdom (2012): B+

Big Fun in the Big Town (1986): A

Everyone seems to hate this with the exception of Walter Chaw

I liked Kevin quite a bit too, but not enough to drown myself in the sea of negative takes. Better to shore myself up to howl about how terrible the new Dardennes BS is.

Still never seen a dardennes joint.

See The Son. Skip the rest.

Carancho (Pablo Tapero, 2010) - I hate Children of Men, so I found myself not caring for the end...not much that was all that arresting before that. More stories of trying to get money or drugs or both in Argentina. Must have been bored out of my mind to go into that.

Death Watch (Bernard Tavernier, 1980) - from his best period surely (Coup de Torchon was made a year later). Keitel is his good restrained self, and got a look at Romy Schneider - liked what I saw.

Sweet Movie (Dusan Makavejev, 1974) - this film is apparently still banned in Britain. Has that quality of once seen, never forgotten - would be a double bill from hell w/Salo.

Angels' Share (Ken Loach, 2012) - really pleasant, quite funny, sympathetic characters, healthy dose of Tory hate. Tick, tick, tick. What more could you want?

xtreme Private Eros - Kazuo Hara doc from '74 and a stone cold classic where he wants to make a film of his wife he has recently split up with "to be close to her" (and their son). So he watched her get into and out of relationships w/1) another lover in Okinawa, 2) a black GI soldier, whom she has another baby with, and 3) watches her give birth to this baby (soldier had run off by then) by herself in Hara's flat in Tokyo (this is an incredible 10 min sequence) and then 4) finally join a commune, where her kids are taken care of while she works nights in a strip club.

In between Kazuo starts an affair w/one of the crew working in the doc, and he makes her interview his wife, too. All v layered, and v sweet, as you can imagine.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, February 17, 2012 6:44 AM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^watched this today, no joke that 1st birth scene is 1 of the best things ever recorded; this whole thing is basically a better feminist text than andrea dworkins whole life

i also watched http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boost

adapted from a novel ben stein (!) wrote abt ludes -
http://www.theuncool.com/journalism/ludes-book-review-ny-times/

amanda blake aka miss kitty from gunsmoke has a few scenes as a coke dealer/user

barbara : that was 20…jesus, no, it was 25 years ago. I was the top call girl in Vegas. That was before I moved to this burg and started dealing coke. Had it all, before i got busted. Lost all my old customers…the stars, the politicians, all my connections.

tv (jeopardy) "…are incorporated in this state?"

Linda: "What is Delaware?"

james woods: "Hey, good one, buddy. (pats Lindas leg)"

tv "listen to this, he has $12,000"

barbara: "I know your hooter's hollowed through, but…I still recommend coke over all those downers Mark's been feeding you. Those are dangerous.

james woods: "I'm going to knock off everything once I put my plan into operation."

barbara "stick with coke. Don't mix your chemicals"

http://i46.tinypic.com/bgs56w.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/2mh7t3a.jpg

it gets a !__! out of 5

Hey Johnny, that's awesome - it is an amazing doc, for many reasons, and should be better known.

Effi Briest (Fassbinder, 1974) - a 'blank' and highly literal (plenty of narrated quotation) adaptation of Fontane's novel. Haven't read the source material, but I'd say the distance in time and its subtleties present -- with the haunted house episodes, which incidentally don't come off that well -- an opportunity for Fassbinder to be less direct with the whole 'bourgeois marriage is a woman's prison full stop'. In Martha he just hammers the point but there is still 40 mins left you know.

Ajantrik (Ghatak, 1958) - I would always have one of his movies in a (silyl as that is) top 10 of all time, but the more of his mere eight films I see the harder it is to know which one. This is surprise of the year, a movie as modern in its construction (its play with sound effects/design to make the car 'human') and themes (disintegration by fusion of man with technology ws novel stuff then) as Hiroshima Mon Amour. I love that it looks forward to Taxi Driver, Crash AND the Herbie movies!

The Night Porter (Cavani, 1974) - Bogarde and Rampling reunion (both were on Visconti's The Dammed, similar themes and all). Surely the best 'art house' effort by either of them (well Bogarde has The Servat). There is a staggering 10 min sequence of the two of them in the Opera house, exchanging glances, getting reacquainted, over music (that looks forward to The Piano Teacher) that takes the breath away - the acting here is a marvel, you truly buy in to what they shared - no matter how ridiculous this is played out in subsequent scenes.

Touki Bouki (Mambety, 1973) - no amount of new wave watching will prepare for the fragmented story of this Senegalese couple's attempt to get a ship to Paris. Brilliant use of repeated music, but I had my struggles with it. Would need to watch this in a cinema to hold my concentration.

Harvest 3000 Years (Gerima, 1975) - Ethiopian drama relating the harshness and exploitation of life on the land. Needs a restoration but I think there are too many extended sequences that you simply zone out of and is a very self-concious avant-garde effort. Not enough to the script.

First 1/2 of Helter Skelter the 1976 movie about the Tate-La Bianca murders based on the writing of Victor Bugliosi the prosecuter in the case. Seems pretty well done for the time & for a tv movie which I think it is.
Being shown in 2 2hr pieces on consecutive nights on True Movies.
Got 3 awards or was nominated for them at the time.

& the guy playing Manson also later played ED Gein I think in the film of the same name.

last film at the cinema = bela tarr's the turin horse, a very great horror film

last film on dvd = lamberto bava's demons, a very entertaining horror movie

in between naps, have also been re-watching antonioni's blow up - david hemmings is SUCH a dick in it! lots of it has dated horribly - the scene where vanessa redgrave smokes a joint and nods her head to a groovy jazz rec is truly cringe-making - but the sequences in the park still seem very fresh and contemporary. antonioni's use of silence, the way that the wind ripples the trees, the distance between subject and camera and the way that the characters move through the exterior and interior spaces is just masterly - don't think anybody has ever been better at placing the camera than old M.A.