Last (x) movies you saw

Looper (2012; 3.5/5)
Suicide Club (2002; 3/5)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939; 4.5/5)
Cabin Boy (1994; 3/5)
Life Without Principle (2011; 4/5)
Billy Liar (1963; 4/5)
Crossfire Hurricane (Stones doc; 2012; 2.5/5)
Holy Motors (2012; 3.5/5)

The last week or so ...

Rise of the Guardians -- 2.5/5
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 -- 2/5
Life of Pi -- 3/5
On the Road -- 2.5/5
Hitchcock -- 2/5
Skyfall -- 3.5/5

how would you rate Lincoln, Eric?

Conservatively, 3.5/5 but I expect another viewing to nudge it up to 4+ territory.

I feel like Letterboxd makes me rate everything like the Rolling Stone album review section.

I had the same reaction -- and a second viewing might bump it half a star. I'm just not as enamored with DDL as everyone else is.

Same. Lucky he's surrounded by the supporting cast of the year/ever.

I never thought I'd write this sentence: Sally Field for Supporting Actress nom.

Hal Holbrook has gotten so Hal Holbrooky that I just want him to be my mommy.

I've made a concerted effort to watch more films starting the last year or two -- got Hulu Plus for Criterion access. The last couple I've seen in the theatre were Looper (4/5) and Skyfall (2.5/5).

Online/DVD/TCM, the last x -- hmm.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Zéro de Conduit
Eyes Without a Face
Clean, Shaven
Summertime
The Vanishing
The Magician
Summer With Monika
The Lady Vanishes
Blue
Quadrophenia
The League of Gentlemen
Kwaidan
La Bête Humaine
The Conversation
Eating Raoul

I tried watching 8 1/2 again (1st tried 20 years ago) and still couldn't get through it -- I hate every character so much that the filmmaking can't draw me in. Watched The Shining again when it was on a couple of weeks ago but it was on a channel with commercials, muted dirty words and blurs over naughty bits, so I don't really want to count it.

I'm somewhere between the 3 and 4 ratings for Perks of Being a Wallflower above. Haven't read the book, and couldn't figure out when it was set--the mix tapes probably put the early 2000s as an end-date, but if there were any other clues that narrowed that down, I missed them. The music interested me. Tone-Loc, the Smiths, and all those mix tapes--I wonder what Rob Sheffield thinks of this. I missed "Teen Age Riot" altogether--must have been when I was glaring at bright-cellphone-woman in the next aisle--but liked hearing "Pretend We're Dead." Something that stretches credulity: high school students who know the Shaggs and Nick Drake but have never heard "Heroes." Something else: the lead guy is supposed to be in grade 9? Because he looks just as old as his wallflower friends, and doesn't act like a 14-year-old, you accept that, but if you start thinking about the plausibility of him getting involved with high school seniors, well, it was too big a leap for me. I've got other nitpicky complaints, but some of it worked fine. Taking the Smiths off the turntable at a party and putting on Tone-Loc reminded me of Quadrophenia. The gay character struck me as 1,000 times less of a caricature than the equivalent in Scott Pilgrim. Didn't foresee where everything was headed.

i just refuse to write "nom," ever

but ""nom"" is fine.

om

Cape Fear (Thomson, 1962) A
Skyfall (Mendes, 2012) B+
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Madden, 2012) C-
The Raven (McTeigue, 2012) B-
Casa Di Me Padre (Piedmont, 2012) C+
This Must Be The Place (Sorrentino, 2012) B
Deep End (Skolimowski, 1970) A-
Night Train to Munich (Reed, 1940) B
Looper (Johnson,2012) B-

Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012) - tense, entertaining, but hollow. 3/5
Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959) - Overlong, but solid western. Dean Martin is great, Ricky Nelson awful. 3/5
Ruby Sparks (Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton, 2012) - Really good critique on the manic pixie dream girl trope. Zoe Kazan is superb 4.5/5
Privilege (Peter Watkins, 1967) - Brilliantly weird and blackly comic sending-up of the music biz, religion and politics. 4/5
Permissive (Lindsey Shonteff, 1972) - Grim cautionary tale about the downward spiral of a girl who becomes a groupie to a godawful '70s prog-folk band. 2.5/5
Beyond the Black Rainbow (Panos Cosmatos, 2012) - Great analog-synth score, set design, and early '80s vibe, but glacially paced and impenetrable. 2.5/5
Blithe Spirit (Lean, 1945) - Rex Harrison's life is one long session of dry martinis, brandy, cigarettes, cigars and coffee. And ghosts. 4/5
Scrooged (Richard Donner, 1988) - Murray's funny, but the film's a messy trifle of cruel humour and schmaltz. 2/5

re Rio Bravo & Scrooged: your words strike at my very heart ;_;

I cherish every rational rating on a Howard Hawks film like the rare gifts they are.

damn, and they call me a h8r.

It's probably because you are a h8r.

not of Ricky Nelson's pillowy lips, I'm not

Beyond the Black Rainbow (Panos Cosmatos, 2012) - Great analog-synth score, set design, and early '80s vibe, but glacially paced and impenetrable. 2.5/5 4.20/5

its been a classic-american-amoral-movies-from-the-early-to-mid-70s week for me.

Chinatown (Polanski, 1974) great performance by nicholson although it doesnt quite have the All Time Great status i gave on first viewing. forgot how evil the last 15 minutes are.
Badlands (Malick, 1973) the first malick ive seen that i really loved. sheen is a charming scamp of a psycho isnt he.

he shot a football because he considered it excess baggage

haha yes. also: "We had our bad moments like any couple. Kit accused me of only being along for the ride while at times I wished he'd fall in the river and drown so I could watch."

The Last Detail is on TV tonight, might watch.

This week:
Le Gai Savor (Godard, 1969) - went all mad for it in the JLG thread. One of my faves from him.
Out 1 (Rivette, 1971) - 2 EPs so far and enjoying loads - continuation of L'Amour Fou and then a branching out into something else. Was actually made for TV but never broadcast, and that's worth thinking about when we have 'settled' for HBO box sets and (lol) are 'proud' not to watch TV.
The Cubans (Varda, 1962) - short film made of photographs (like Marker's La Jetee with even more 'movement') on life a few years after the revolution: talks about art, music, Castro. Witty. (its on youtube)

At the cinema: It Always Rains on Sunday (Hamer, 1947) - classic Ealing about a day in East London - escaped convincts, seedy characters on the make, the entrapment that people feel: the rain on Sunday metaphor works, and the multiple narratives are handled expertly for the most part with a really good final chase. Grim but lots of excellently scripted humour. A thing I'd never seen before: a British noir.

i just refuse to write "nom," ever

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Monday, November 19, 2012 1:18 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark

What about when you want to "nom" on a hot piece of manass.

Wreck-it Ralph and it was putrid.

Louie Bluie (Zwigoff 1985)
A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes 1974)
The Most Dangerous Game (Schoedesack 1932)
Les Diaboliques (Clouzot 1955)
Number Seventeen (Hitchcock 1932)

xpost

Video game cinema: the worst new(ish) microgenre?

Tron, War Games, Spy Kids 3 - the facts aren't with you there.

Argo which I enjoyed and didn't realise was directed by Affleck until the credits.

& cos I was in a bad mood on Wednesday I went to see The Sapphires which has some really nice singing in. Not really sure of it on other levels though, wasn't much chemistry between the romantic leads.
Maybe I should have hung around for another hour and seen THe Master, but I'll probably go to that next week. Possibly End Of Shift too.

xpost when Tron is the best film of the microgenre, you know what you are dealing with

Spy Kids 3 is good?

scott pilgrim!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Last Starfighter

Remember liking WarGames and Last Starfighter as a kid, so ok, though remember being bored by/not finishing Tron when my parents rented it for us. Time to give them all a fresh look, though.

Seriously, however, fuck Scott Pilgrim.

video game movies are all shit because the people making them don't get why video games are fun

also why does something have to be something else first, like every new thing is just a concatenation of references to other things infinitely regressing, &c.

I predict that the next wave of remakes and whatnot will be based around characters from breakfast cereals.

Count Chocula
Summer 2014

made my dreamworks and featuring a Rihanna song.

made by, sorry

i do not own Dreamworks

incisive cultural commentary itt

pithy comments of dubious sincerity itt

I don't get why video games are fun, but I'm pretty sure they are more fun than Tron

(Scott Pilgrim was a B+)

West Side Story (Robbins and Wise, 1961) A-
The House of the Devil (West, 2009) B
The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese, 1988) B+
Sleeper (Allen, 1973) B+
Vanya on 42nd Street (Malle, 1994) B
Christine (Carpenter, 1983) C+ (maybe a B-)
Margaret (Lonergan, 2011) A
Hocus Pocus (Ortega, 1993) D-
Fright NIght (Gillespie, 2011) B
Payback (Baichwal, 2012) C-

We'll never get a good western again until a director appears with personal experience of the joys of shooting someone.

GoldenEye = videogame neo-realism.

1984 (radford, 1984)
shadows of forgotten ancestors (paradjanov, 1964)
midnight in paris (allen, 2011)