Last (x) movies you saw

(xpost)...so there's something there; puzzlement is good. But I really didn't enjoy it. Didn't like the look, even though I understand what they were after. I would have preferred something less austere and more grounded in the moment--some attempt to get at the excitement and momentousness of what was unfolding. That, or a documentary. I recognized the Henderson character but couldn't place him: Gerald Peary, who I saw speak about a year ago.

I thought it was triumphant on its own terms, and enjoyed it. Don't quite get the over-the-moon raves, unless these critics are code monkeys.

I laughed at the WTF moment near the end.

On its own term, yeah, it succeeded, but they seemed like such limited terms to me. "Austere" was the wrong word--makes it sound like Bresson or Bergman. "Flat" is more like it.

You mean the last shot of the film, before the singer? I had a few WTF moments.

Been flying a lot recently, gave me a chance to catch up on the films that everyone else saw and I didn't. All seen on planes over the past two weeks:

Lincoln 7/10
Side Effects 5/10
Django Unchained 8/10
Robot and Frank 7/10
Argo 7/10
The Place Beyond The Pines 8/10

Just saw Admission. thought i might like it because tina fay and maybe it was a romcom. but instead it was about feminists secretly need a man and women need babies to feel whole. ack

oh yes also it is about bad nepotism in college admissions (you know someone besides tina fay) vs. good nepotism (tina fey thinks you might be related to her).

Recently watched awesomeness:
L.A. Story (re-watch)
Sweet Smell of Success
Cape Fear ('62)
The Lady Eve
Goin' Down The Road
Raiders of the Lost Ark (re-watch)

Recently watched meh-ness:
Picnic
Body Heat
J. Edgar
G.I. Joe: Retaliation
Friends with Money

Recently watched and regretted:
A Good Day to Die Hard

drug war is alright but i was hoping for something a bit meatier

Night Across the Street (7/10)
The Scarlet Empress (rescreened: 6/10)
Conspiracy (8/10

filly brown is so ridiculously bad.

Docks of New York (8/10
Early Spring (8/10)
The Prisoner of Shark Island (6/10)

Pacific Rim (del Toro, 2013) - hated this so, so much
White Dog (Fuller, 1982) - good despite terrible acting from MacNicol
Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010) - devastating

The Enigma of Kasper Hauser (Werner Herzog, 1974) - awesome to see this at the cinema
Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog, 1971) - Herzog don't make 'em like that no more..
Wadjda (Haifaa Al-Mansour, 2012) - lots of processes filmed here: the crushing of kindness amidst a climate of oppressive compliance, the misreading of book's musicaliy, how that influences thought and actions...
The Lower Depths (Kurosawa, 1957) - a heavy-going (as it should be) piece of photographed theatre, some awesome angles in confined spaces, the script and performances find humour in bizarre ways. This + any Brit kitchen-sink classic could be an interesting dbl bill. Got three more on this box set I got given for my bday.
Before Midnight (Linklater, 2013) - really the best, this series takes yer Eric Rohmer on with awesome results. I really hope there are more installments, as tricky as that could be...
Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012) - really funny, love how the Paris trip was the financial crisis in LOL microcosm, remarkably even on the banker fella. Not sure how Frances wasn't eating out of a trashcan by the end, but if you suspend disbelief its diverting enough.

On TV: Red Dragon (just love the stuff around 'becoming...'), the first two Bourne films (never seen 'em before).

Blue Velvet (1986, Lynch) *
Upstream Color (2012, Carruth)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964, Leone)
Master, the (2012, Paul T. Anderson)
Silver Linings Playbook (2012, Russell) fuck this movie
Dinosaur (2000, various)
Quartet (2012, Hoffman)
Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming et al.) * starting to see many flaws in this. e.g. not only is dorothy's lesson speech ("won't look any further than my own backyard" etc) not supported by anything shown in the movie, it's also gibberish -- a bunch of words that sound nice but don't mean anything.
Wreck-it Ralph (2012, Moore)
Intouchables (2011, Nakache & Toledano) wtf imdb
Man with the Iron Fists, the (2012, RZA)
Jurassic Park (1993, Spielberg) *
Santa Sangre (1989, Jodorowsky)
Lincoln (2012, Spielberg)

* seen previously

Silver Linings Playbook (2012, Russell) fuck this movie

god this film induces such a visceral reaction

Rushmore (5/5--first time in a theatre since it came out)
Murder in the First (3/5)
Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp (3.5/5)
A Civil Action (3.5/5)
Good 'Ol Freda (4/5)
Tiny Furniture (4/5--still mulling this over; maybe a notch higher or lower)
Frances Ha (4/5)
Trick Baby (3.5/5)
Terms and Conditions May Apply (3.5/5)
A Brighter Summer Day (3.5/5--like Yi Yi better)

* = rewatches

this is 40 8/10
berberian sound studio 6/10
the worlds end 8/10
the hunt 9/10
*forrest gump 6/10
*super 8/10
black god white devil 9/10
the tourist 5/10
evan almighty 4/10
*planes trains and automobiles 10/10
*this sporting life 10/10
the break up 6/10
orphan 5/10
sightseers 8/10

Europa Report: 4/10
Elysium: 5/10
Repo Men: 3/10
Dreyer's Ordet, but with the subtitles turned off and very high: 10/10

day for night (truffaut 73) 4/5
the wild child (truffaut 70) 3/5
the l-shaped room (forbes 62) 4/5
the swimming pool (jacques deray 68) 4/5
l'avventura (antonioni 60) 3.5/5
falling angels (scott smith 2003) 4/5
the hunger (tony scott 83) 2/5
little white lies (canet 2010) 2.5/5
after life (koreeda 98) 3/5

Someone was watching TCMs Truffaut Fridays last month, I take it. I PVRd quite a few of the ones I haven't seen (DfN included) but haven't watched any yet.

sure was; avoid 'the woman next door' imo

Haven't seen that one but didn't PVR it cause a) I'd never heard of it and b) my queue is getting insanely bloated.

the l-shaped room (forbes 62) 4/5

thats a very under-rated movie. TCM in the US seems to be of a much higher standard than in the UK/Ireland. We seem to get nothing but B-grade Westerns on TCM here.

someone needs to write a defense of those late Truffauts -- ugh

Only late Truffaut I've seen is The Last Metro, which ain't bad, but which I have a hard time remembering now only five or six years after seeing it.

alfred, i know you're a jamesian - have you seen The Green Room (I haven't)? i've read 'the altar of the dead', which in memory seems to be one of those late, inner-directed james short stories like 'the beast in the jungle' - ie p unfilmable

j crunch, 3/5 out of 5 is p. harsh on wild child, imho (it wld make a gd dbl w/ herzog's kaspar hauser). truffaut is such a gd actor - he brings the real to close encounters :-)

Love in the Afternoon (1971, Rohmer) 4/5
Black Christmas (1974, Clark) 3/5
Paris Nous Appartient (1961, Rivette) 5/5
Man of Steel (1973, Snyder) 2/5
You, the Living (2007, Andersson) 3/5
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973, Yates) 4/5
Scarlet Street ((1945, Lang) 4/5
World War Z (who cares) 1/5
The London Nobody Knows (1969, Cohen) 3/5
Histoires Du Cinema 1-4 (1988-98, Godard) 5/5
The Silent Partner (1978, Duke) 4/5
Heaven Can Wait (1943, Lubitsch) 3/5
Now You See Me (2013, Leterrier) 1/5
Pacific Rim (2013, Del Toro) 2/5
Ten (2002, Kiarostami) 5/5
M*A*S*H (1970, Altman) 2/5
Umberto D (1952, De Sica) 4/5
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999, Jarmusch) 4/5
The World's End (2013, Wright) 2/5
La Collectionneuse (1967, Rohmer) 4/5
Frances Ha (2013, Baumbach) 4/5
The Conjuring (2013, Wan) 1/5
The Wolverine (2013, Mangold) 2/5
Only God Forgives (2013, Winding Refn) 3/5
Le Beau Mariage (1982, Rohmer) 4/5
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013, Lowney) 3/5
The Devils (1971, Russell) 4/5

Man of Steel (1973, Snyder) 2/5

waitaminnit now

lol!

j crunch, 3/5 out of 5 is p. harsh on wild child, imho (it wld make a gd dbl w/ herzog's kaspar hauser). truffaut is such a gd actor - he brings the real to close encounters :-)

im positive on it, skews too near like a science documentary 2 me, but the end is affecting; agree w/ u on truffaut as an actor

Get Carter (3/5--don’t understand why it’s so highly regarded)
Out of the Past (4/5--first time in many years; looks as good as any noir I can think of, find some of the last half-hour confusing)
The Devil Wears Prada (3.5/5--I wish Streep had more shading; she only gets to break character twice)
Peacock (2.5/5)
Urban Cowboy (3.5/5--didn’t expect Travolta and Winger to spend more of the film apart than together)
High Crimes (3/5)
In the Cut (3.5/5--weird; I swear that Meg Ryan is actually playing Nicole Kidman here)
Executive Decision (3.5/5--Kurt Russell as Kramer: “Now I’m driving the plane!”)
Love & Other Drugs (3.5/5--more movie stars)
Hereafter (3.5/5)

the thing 4/5
modern romance 4/5
the avengers 3/5
death by hanging 3/5
to the wonder 4.5/5
persona 5/5

glad you liked to the wonder, clouds, what did you make of it?

i loved the setting of rural/exurban homes as that is basically were i grew up, and i felt like malick understood both the beauty (and "wonder") of those places, but was also appropriately sensitive of the evil (the perfect subdivision homes existing in some karmic way due to the suffering of the poor people living on toxic land) and crushing isolation contained therein.

yeah that's nicely put. there was a ryan post in the thread about the poverty of the critiques of this movie, & it was frustrating to hear people beat the twinkling sunlight thing to death when those sequences were so dedicated to location - to living next to a cornfield one could feasibly go walk in, & to be divided from it in a boxy new home. i liked this film so much. would love to see again, particularly the roaming bardem scenes.

The Green Room is v good, Truffaut's best work as an actor too

Damm, for some reason there's no Region 2 DVD of Green Room

alfred, i know you're a jamesian - have you seen The Green Room (I haven't)? i've read 'the altar of the dead', which in memory seems to be one of those late, inner-directed james short stories like 'the beast in the jungle' - ie p unfilmable

Yes, in the late nineties. I wasn't too impressed with Truffaut the actor: so damn soft. But I remember watching the movie alongside the other late seventies fluff. I'd give it another shot.

Elysium: 2/5
Amer: 4.5/5
The Act of Killing: 4/5
Pain & Gain: 4/5

Born to Win (1971, Passer) 6/10
Taking Off (1971, Forman) 7/10
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955, Preminger) 7/10
Ice (1970, Kramer) 7/10
The Last Christeros (2011, Meyer) 6/10
Le Train (1973, Granier-Deferre) 7/10
The Gardener (2012, M. Makhmalbaf) 8/10
Drug War (2012, To) 7/10
*Seconds (1966, Frankenheimer) 8/10
The Happy Sad (2013, Evans) 3/10
Le Beaute du Diable (1950, Clair) 7/10
Off Label (2012, Palmieri, Mosher) 5/10
*L'avventura (1960, Antonioni) 9/10
*Stars in My Crown (1950, Tourneur) 10/10
Alexander the Last (2009, Swanberg) 6/10
*True Confessions (1981, Grosbard) 7/10
Lovelace (2013, Epstein, Friedman) 4/10
Kill Your Darlings (2013, Krokidas) 5/10

*rewatches

Agree with Morbs re: Truffaut as actor in TGR. He was very good as a subdued obsessive type - or at least a "highly dedicated" type - when he took on those sort of roles.

Una Noche - Great for a first film but weirdly rushed. That lady is a helluva filmmaker but I'm looking forward to the next film more than celebrating the first
The Big City (Satyajit Ray) - Interesting! Mostly about how society changes in the hothouse of urban settings. Gorgeous lead actress don't hurt.

had a double feature w a friend where we went to see frances ha & then came home & watched showgirls

i like the former far more than the latter.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints is pretty by the numbers.

er, sorry: latter more than former.

Was gonna say, "Are you NUTS?!"

Showgirls is sad garbage for the post-everything age. what a "rediscovery."

I already knew you're nuts.

happy people (herzog)
amour (haneke)

How is the former? Big Herzog fan but he's got way more out there than I'll ever have time to watch.

i loved it. probably on par with "wheel of time" for me as far as his docs go. oddly, or perhaps not oddly, similar in spirit to that film as well.