Last (x) movies you saw

yeah dominik has a good track record

also BEN MENDELSOHN is in this, who I have been in love with since high school

why has this movie been out forever in other countries and not USA, that shits so backward

sorry guys, it's terrible

I DON'T BELIEVE YOU

i do want to hear some other opinions cos it's been pretty well reviewed but i thought it was a mess. I haven't seen his last one but i did enjoy Chopper (although i give Eric Bana the lion's share of the credit)

what didn't you like about it?

well it starts off pretty low-key and Eddie Coyle-ish and i was digging it but then it's just scene after scene of rambling dialogue(i know that's Higgins' thing but these really go on) interspersed with super stylised sequences soundtracked by anachronistic pop songs in a sub-Tarantino style. The political "subtext" is laughable (there's a tv or radio with Obama/Bush speechifying in the background of every practically every scene) and the whole thing just felt like a giant waste of time, especially with a cast that talented. I guess Brad Pitt is ok but he's just coasting in this thing. A lot of people are going to love it. I can tell.

Dr. Strangelove (this was brilliant and hilarious and peter sellers is god)
The Searchers
Elephant

A View to a Kill (Glen, 1985) D
Malcolm X (Lee, 1992) B
The Innkeepers (West, 2011) B+
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979) A
Sunrise (Murnau, 1927) A-
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Daldry, 2011) F
Perfect Sense (Mackenzie, 2011) A
Shallow Grave (Boyle, 1994) B-
The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1937) B

On the Road (Walter Salles, 2012) - It's a good job it's long as it took me a while to warm to it, but I liked it quite a bit in the end. It's a bit too straightforward a telling, but it is a really good looking movie with a good looking cast. Needed more of Viggo Mortensen's Burroughs character, though. 4/5

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2012) - Loved the nightime photography of the Turkish countryside. This is very much a sleepless at 3am movie. Funny, too, but overlong. 4/5

Roadgames (Richard Franklin, 1981) - "Rear Window in a truck". Good, laidback Hitchcock/Duel homage. 3/5

Not Quite Hollywood (Mark Hartley, 2008) - This is what prompted me to rent Roadgames. Entertaining doc on Australian maverick filmmaking ('Ozploitation')in the 1970s and '80s. Full of wild anecdotes and crazy clips. 4/5

A Serious Man (Coens, 2009) - Occasionally brilliant comedic farce, but so cruel and sour, and peopled only by grotesques. 3/5

Quatermass and the Pit (Roy ward Baker, 1967) - A good London movie. Slow-burning, but creepy as hell, with an amazing electronic score. 4/5

Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980) - Now plays more like a limp parody of a slasher film, but still goofy fun and some good kills. In a way it's an inversion of Psycho - it turns out the mother is the killer, who is murdering on behalf of her dead son. 3/5

V/H/S (various, 2012) - Found footage horror anthology of unoriginal stories filled with hateful characters. The Ti West segment is perhaps the best, it's also the most subtle and least 'horrific'. Just a short with a nice sense of dread, with a twist ending. otherwise the relentless misogyny is depressing. 1/5

platform (jia zhangke). a bunch of traveling chinese artists experience the transition to capitalism during the 1980s in a rural outpost. I think there were like two close-ups in the whole thing which made it confusing and really exasperating. it was excessively elliptic and the movie felt like nine hours long. there's a nice scene when they get stuck somewhere, a song starts and the train comes ... I liked that, the little political bits as well.

la voie lactée (luis buñuel). now this is how you make a film! a summary of catholic heresies through the ages with exquisite transitions in time / space, hilarious as well, 90 minutes packed with so much great stuff. it makes JZ's aesthetic vision of history pathetically weak in comparison. there is a good carlos fuentes article about it on the criterion website.

la voie lactée = Possibly my fave Buñuel -or at least the one I can watch and rewatch with equal pleasure. Though I think 13 years of Catholic schooling helped in catching many of the lol's Don Luis planted thruout like little landmines.

oh, same here. I erased most of that stuff from memory and it was v strange to see that on screen, it def added to the fun.

platform (jia zhangke). a bunch of traveling chinese artists experience the transition to capitalism during the 1980s in a rural outpost. I think there were like two close-ups in the whole thing which made it confusing and really exasperating. it was excessively elliptic and the movie felt like nine hours long. there's a nice scene when they get stuck somewhere, a song starts and the train comes ... I liked that, the little political bits as well.

i recorded some of the flute music from this film onto a tape through my stereo, & still play it sometimes. really beautiful. this is a long-feeling film, it does a lot though. like you feel it more than you go with it, somehow.

haven't seen platform (yet) but i absolutely loved jia's still life, which wasn't confusing in the slightest, or even very elliptical. in her interview w/ the wire last month laurie spiegel uses the phrase (borrowed from rhys chatham) "slow change" music - well, jia def makes slow change cinema, where v closely observed slow changes in landscape, expression, gesture can become highly meaningful, even startling.

The Man Who Left his Will on Film (Oshima, 1970) - as usual for this period it seems to draw on an absurdist theatrical concept; energetic and yet ends up feeling like a meditation on a friend's suicide; nostalgic already (the flaws and inadequacies and naivety there for all to see) for the time when film and an acitvist politics went hand in hand...

Je, tu, il, elle (Akerman, 1974) - mid-way piece between stuff like Hotel Monteray (all the time spent in a room and learning to move and not move the camera) and Jeanne Dielman, where you have the concept aligned to more meat to the plot/or what Akerman is looking to project for the world to see.

Looper - saw in teh cinema, really enjoyed it, and was totally untroubled by paradoxical complaints.

Judge Dredd - another cinema trip, again thoroughly enjoyed it; could do without 3D but that's always the case.

Back to the Future - watched most of this after realising it was on tele the other weekend (after seeing Looper); still awesome. Best time travel film ever?

Cabin in the Woods - last week's Lovefilm DVD; had an inkling regarding what it was going to do, but was pretty much blind going in as to how it would do it. laughed (in a good way) more than I jumped. Whedon and Abrams are merging into one entity in my mind.

Dune - this ruled. it is by will alone i set my mind in motion.
Distant Voices, Still Lives - i love how good the singing is in this. oh and it had an actor i recognised: pete postlethwaite!
Wings of Desire - scene in the library was beautiful.

In Like Flint - both over-the-top and also straight enough to be Austin Powers' favorite movie. The sexist portrayal of the villains didn't seem to be entirely a parody, unfortunately.

The Descent - pretty interesting that the affair is gone over in a blink-and-you-miss-it way and yet it is very important to the character motivations in the film. I preferred the first half, but the second half was also good.

Dawn of the Dead (2004) - decent, although I'm not sure why they chose this zombie movie to remake when they had no interest in the social satire.

Looper - The only cinema in town (Empire Theatres, you are the guilty party) has been turning the volume way down recently, apparently because of all the bass bleed from neighboring movies. It was too much in this one, so I walked out. Never going back there -- looks like it's home theater from now on.

this week, Sahara, Knight And Day, and Paycheck.

sahara was NOT one terrific movie despite the jeffrey lyons blurb on the back of the box. it was okay though. steve zahn was dumb. i can't believe it was two hours long. breck eisner directed it. breck's real name is michael. you'll never guess who his dad is! he is directing a movie about stretch armstrong. the stretchy toy.

knight and day was also not great and also very long. i think there were parts that were supposed to be funny. mostly i liked the gunplay. james mangold directed it. i only really liked cop land by him. i didn't see 3:10 to yuma. maybe i would like that one. he's directing the wolverine movie.

paycheck i really liked! it was also 2 hours long. uma looked weird in it! she can look really weird. i like looking at her nose though. movie wasn't great, but it had me going. i'm not a big john woo fan.

watched WARNING SIGN last night. directed by hal barwood. he wrote the screenplays for sugarland express and dragonslayer. he made a bunch of indiana jones computer games in the 90's. WARNING SIGN has sam waterston AND yaphet kotto so you know its good. plus,kathleen quinlan's unfortunate haircut. AND it had the old dude from the walking dead t.v. show in it when he was a young dude! he was even shirtless in one scene and he looked pretty sexy. man, i love the walking dead. so, he has some long-time experience with zombie-like behavior. cuz that's kinda what WARNING SIGN is about. government germ that makes people go crazy.

oh also watched a documentary last week about a 400 year old japanese sushi master. kinda boring. dude does the same thing every day for 400 years. story of my life. felt bad for his sons. they apparently have to spend 400 years doing the same thing too.

aw, i liked jiro!

Some more I watched a while ago, all at the Renoir cinema:

The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr, 2011)
Tabu (Gomes, 2012)

And yesterday:

Barbara (Petzhold, 2012) - like his last Yella. This time it depicts a 1980s East German escapade. There needs to be more at work than this? I liked the scenes where lterature was involved: the Doctor (Nina Hoss) reading Twain to one of her patients, and her being told of a story (which I looked up) by Turgenev as she visits his house.

Today I relaxed to:

Sansho Dayu (Mizoguchi, 1954) - some of the photography was truly breathtaking, as were the emotions, use of music and folk. Taken me a while but I'm finally getting hold of Mizoguchi's greatness.

watch "a story of late chrysanthemums" and "the crucifed lovers" next. devastating.

Watched Tyrannosaur the other night... brrrr...

Romancing the Stone. Forgot how funny it is.

Or rather, didn't understand how funny it is when I saw it 15 times when I was 12.

^interesting thread to be made based on this idea

rrrreally wanna see tabu
& should just get around to watching gomes' last flick instead of anticipating

I wasn't that fussed with Tabu - can't even recall what was wrong with, much less what was right, probably why I forgot about it. At least Tarr's film was relentless but still...when you make something like Satantango. In some ways I'm glad its his last. Not a bad way to go.

watch "a story of late chrysanthemums" and "the crucifed lovers" next. devastating.

― bryan "radical" ferry (clouds), Tuesday, 16 October 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just watched the former (a shagged out copy on youtube). I think what makes the devastation complete is the father's acceptance of the young girl and his reason for it: that she has been used by her son -- her sacrifice complete -- to make him into an artist: you rarely get that acknowledgment/discussion of a woman's role in a male artist's life.

I liked the suggestion (intended or not) that it might have been his four years' labour in "low-grade work" (performance troupe) that actually made him any good.

Incredible to think this was made in '39.

we're not on ILF but can we have this as its tagline: At least Tarr's film was relentless

About time my words were put to use..

The Intouchables
enjoyable french language film about a coloured ex-con being hired as the helper for a rich paraplegic. Funny, touching etc etc.
Really enjoyed it and it was the first foreign language film I'd gone to see in a while.

Not sure what to make of the film-makers changing the ethnicity of the helper. If it does make much difference or not. Or is swapping one ethnicity of minority poor for another an issue?
you get to see the real guys at the end.

watched rendition last night for some reason. zzzzzz....

well, it kept my attention, but it was so by the book plot-wise and i didn't care about anyone at all. i should have cared about someone. at least the guy getting tortured. they should have hired good actors to play all the parts. then maybe i would have cared. or they should have given more coffee to the actors they had. everyone looked like they were asleep. hope meryl streep got a nice beach house out of it or something.

weird too how the idea of rendition seems dated already. hahahahahaha!!!!! oh god we are all going to hell.

Had a good run recently.

Odd Man Out (Reed, 1947) A Only know Reed's work from The Third Man, Our Man in Havana and Oliver!. Really think I should check more of it out as I get the feeling that he's somewhat overlooked in the pantheon of British directors.
The Turin Horse (Tarr, 2011) B
Safe (Hartley, 1995) C+
The Pirates! In an Adventures with Scientists (Lord, 2012) A- Don't think I've laughed at a film this year as much as this one.
Bound (Wachowski Bothers, 1995) B+ Wasn't expecting much from this but was presently surprised. When they get rid of the bloat they are really quite effective.
The Living Daylights (Glen, 1987) B- I see this as a necessary repositioning of the Bond films after the silly Moore years but it's almost too austere and Dalton just talks through clenched teeth too much for my liking.
Misery (Reiner, 1990) B+
Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955) A- This would have been an A until the ending which seemed rushed, anticlimatic and overtly sentimental compared to what had gone before.
Flirting With Disaster (Russell, 1994) B-
The Incredible Hulk (Leterrier, 2008) B
Possession (Zulawski, 1981) B Needed more shouting. Watched this on a long train journey and the woman sitting next to me must have thought I was some sort of psycho for watching this.

Yes - not a bad run at the cinema:

Dredd (3D)
Looper
Liberal Arts - Has anyone else seen this? I really liked Elizabeth Olsen's performance
Ruby Sparks - Great performance from Zoe Kazan, who also wrote the screenplay and plays opposite her irl boyf...would have thought ilx would be all over this film like a rash.
On the Road - Appreciated it for the technical exercise of how you adapt the novel - and the scenery was a pleasant 2 hour holiday on a bleak London Sunday afternoon - but it isn't destined to be a classic film.

More Mizoguchi:

Five Women Around Utamaro (1946)
A Geisha (1953)
The Crucified Lovers (1954)

A post discussing them on the Japanese films -- any excuse to revive that thread.

watching xian bale terminator movie. it's dumb.

but everyone probably already knows that.

It may have been the diminished expectations, but I actually dug it.

well, there is no suspense for one thing. if they kill john connor's dad when he's a kid then they would have to recall all the terminator movies from all the stores in the world. or maybe the actual dvds would cease to exist...and all the old vhs tapes...

just didn't really care about any of it. was rooting for death of all humans.

Together - didn't like
Mirror (Tarkovsky)- some great scenes but i didn't really get it. need to rewatch.
Ghost World - liked at points but the ending was disappointing.
Wild at Heart - couldn't handle. switched off half way through
Days of Being Wild - loved. WKW's fast becoming my fave director.
Solaris (Tarkovsky) - great. driving scene was awes.

a nos amours (pialat, 83) 2.5/5
the comedy (rick alverson, 2012) 4/5
limelight (billy corbin, 2011) 3/5
will success spoil rock hunter? (tashlin, 57) 3/5
seven psychopaths (mcdonagh, 2012) 1.5/5
straw dogs (rod lurie, 2011) 1.5/5
the sitter (dgg, 2011) 3.5/5

Habemus Papam
Angel's Share
Damsel in Distress

The Dawn (cooper, 1938) first irish sound movie. pretty much no budget and amateur actors so its almost like one of those b&w harry enfield sketches. interesting though. about a brigade of IRA men in 20's and informers in their ranks

Paradise Now (Abu-Assan, 2005) takes a good movie (or a skillfully manipulative on) to make you empathise with two suicide bombers.

Midnight In Paris (Allen, 2011) i loved this. best Woody since Sweet and Lowdown

King of Comedy (Scorsese, 1983) gets better with each viewing

Marley (Macdonald, 2011) enjoyable, could have done with a bit more political background though

The Firm (Clarke, 1989) first time i watched this with a group of people. unbearably intense at points. alan clarke is the best.

Taken (Morel, 2008) First time seeing this. great action movie.

hausu
cabin in the woods
little shop of horrors
the host
carrie

wow, what a five-play

how is Hausu?

amazing