Last (x) movies you saw

Vertigo (Hitchcock 1958)
The Grapes of Wrath (Ford 1940)
The Sicilian Clan (Verneuil 1969)
Marathon Man (Schlesinger 1976)
A TCM program of short films, including Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1944) and a few others.

Is it safe?

NYC in 1976? Definitely not.

Eyes Without a Face (1960; 2nd viewing; 5/5)
The Eye (2003; 3/5)
The Haunting (1963; 3/5)
Blood and Black Lace (1963; 3/5)
Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974; 3.5/5)
Only God Forgives (2013; 3/5)
The Devil, Probably (1977; 5/5)

i've been putting off watching devil, probably for a while! i should get round to it soon.

Riddles of the Sphinx is pretty neat, thanks for posting.

Jaws (Spielberg 1975)
Journey to Italy (Rossellini 1954) (dubbed in Italian w/English subtitles aaaarrgh)
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film (Chodorov 2010)
This Is Not a Film (Panahi 2011)
The Bourne Legacy (Gilroy 2012)
What Did the Lady Forget? (Ozu 1937)
Sisters (De Palma 1973)

Modern Romance

Spacefloor?

The Devil, Probably didn't initially seem like it would turn into one of Bresson's all-time greats while I was watching it, but by the time of the bus sequence, I was riveted.

Wuthering Heights (1939) 4/5
Beeswax (2010) 4/5 <---- so so so much better than expected

beeswax is beautiful

Went to see Philomena yesterday because this girl in the cinema asked me if i'd seen it when I went to see Gravity. It was a surprising film for one written by Steve Coogan since it was a weepie, I thought he was more cynical than that. Maybe it was written as a vehicle for him though.
Anyway nice very touching film about nuns in Magdalene laundries selling babies to America and one of the 'shamed' girls or underage mothers of one of the babies trying to find her lost child 50 years later.
This girl was played by Judy Dench who I haven't seen since Skyfall last year, she has presumably been making other things since but this seemed to be quite a contrast. Here she plays a woman who has grown up reading the Daily Mail and Romantic fiction and searching desperately for her abandoned child, there she apparently tried to disown am adopted child at least according to some opinions.

Both actors did great jobs as did several other cast members.

Kind of glad I went to this but wish my showing hadn't been interrupted by the gurglings of other audience members. Somehow I chanced upon a showing with a pair of babies in front of me and the residents of one of the local residential homes dotted around the rest of the audience.

But it was a cheap ticket for the luxury cinema so maybe worth it.
Wish I could think where I'd seen the actress playing the teenage Judy Dench character though.

Indiscriminate gobbling of films like Skittles continues.

Three Outlaw Samurai (Hideo Gosha, 1964)
Mister 880 (Edmund Goulding, 1950)
Jeopardy (John Sturges, 1953)
L'Argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)
My Dinner With Andre (Louis Malle, 1981)
Thor: The Dark World (Alan Taylor, 2013)
Présentation ou Charlotte et son steak (Eric Rohmer, 1951)
Une Étudiante d'aujourd'hui (Eric Rohmer, 1966)
Taken 2 (Olivier Megaton, 2012)

Murder by Numbers (6/10)
Body Double (7/10)
The Night Listener (7/10)
Watermark (7/10)
Spider-Man 3 (5/10)
Defense of the Realm (7/10)
Sleepwalking (6/10)
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (4/10)
Domestic Disturbance (6/10)
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (6/10)

I'll blame my affection for the novel for thinking the adaptation of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is a travesty; it's lucky it's not better known.

I saw your worst-movie-I've-ever-seen post before I posted that...Haven't read the novel. Thought it had some feeling (helped along by the kind of soundtrack ambiance I'm susceptible to), liked Nolte, and thought Sarsgaard was good, though I found the character quite annoying. I was puzzled the whole film as to the alleged bond that brought these three characters together. They shared this life-changing friendship/love for no visible reason that I could see.

Olympus Has Fallen: F-/A+

The Dunwich Horror the 1969 version with Dean Stockwell as the Necronomicon user
and Sandra Dee in partially clothed form. Very very B I thought, special effects seemed to consist of a wind machine and a solariser. As well as a mock up of an ancient one, and several people in hooded monks garb.
Had me wondering what other films there were based on H.P. Lovecraft stories and the only thing I could think of off hand was the alien ships in The Matrix. Or was Re-Animator based on his work?

Re-Animator, From Beyond and Dagon - all directed by Stuart Gordon - are all based on Lovecraft stories.

matrix 3 avi, pitch black vhs, many movies on tbs for the last 9d constantly, even while asleep, except the tv set mysteriously turned off one of the nights. p scarry

They shared this life-changing friendship/love for no visible reason that I could see.

otm. Their relationship made no sense.

Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (6/10)
Stories We Tell (8/10)
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (7/10)
Dodsworth (7/10)

Elysium (3/10)
Alice In Wonderland <Burton>(5/10)
2 Guns (2/10)

American Graffiti (1973, Lucas)
Demon Lover Diary (1980, DeMott)
Dances With Wolves (1990, Costner) slow build, worth it. could do without the voice-over
Tourist, the (2010, von Donnersmarck) pretty good!
Jack Reacher (2012, McQuarrie) lol no
Room 237 (2012, Ascher)
Field of Dreams (1989, Robinson)

wreck-it ralph
post tenebras lux
gandahar (aka light years)

Elysium (3/10)
Alice In Wonderland <Burton>(5/10)

If Elysium is indeed worse than Burton's Alice, then I certainly made the right decision in turning down an invite to see it during the summer.

seems impossible imo

In the last week-point-five (in descending order of good):

Her
Computer Chess
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
Blue Jasmine
Frozen
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Oldboy
Philomena
Black Nativity
Escape from Tomorrow
Nebraska
Delivery Man
Dallas Buyers Club

!! so the Woody wasn't crap...

I have about 25 titles to post.

Yeah, color me surprised. I guess it's a "once every 15 years or so" thing with him now.

I watched New World last night which has the fabulous Min-sik Choi(Oldboy) in it and it was a stylish Infernal Affairs type gangster movie, it was quite predictable but I really love shit like this and the style and understated performances more than make up for the hackneyed plot.

oh Spike Lee has done a hack remake of Oldboy, that sounds dreadful.

Dracula AD 1972 - lots of fun, some hilarious attempts at getting the youth culture, Dracula's hardly in it.
Magical Mystery Tour - not too good! Music video bits are good except for Fool on the Hill (super embarrassing) but the skits are all overlong and painful. Why didn't they include I'm Going in a Field?
Death and the Compass - some interesting directorial choices, not sure it adds up to a satisfying whole
Eureka (Aoyama) - feel like my interrupted viewing of this took a bit away, but this was really something. Fantastic performances. All the coughing stressed me out though!

Fargo (10/10)
Miller’s Crossing (10/10)
No Country for Old Men (10/10)
Blood Simple (7/10)
Enough Said (8/10)
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (8/10)
Marathon Man (9/10)
Sisters (6/10)
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (6/10)
November (6/10)

The Devil Probably
In The Mood For Love
Hunger Games
Hunger Games 2
Bobby Fischer Against The World
Catfish
The Turin Horse
Exit Through The Gift Shop
Gravity
Cache

THe Day The Earth Stood Still the 1951 version which was a nice change from the more frequently shown '08 version which I've seen too many times already. Which might be about 3.
Not sure when I saw this last, could even be decades, It has a very noirish quality to it. I think I need to read the book then i would n't be relying on 30 odd year old descriptions from my elder brother of what was changed when they filmed it.
But yeah, think it deserves status as a classic. It was also interesting to read through what else people had been in on IMDB, the kid went onto FAther Knows Best before starring in an early 70s biker movie Werewolves on Wheels.
I had mainly been looking to see what the kid's mother had been in since she had a face I associated with Sam Spade type private eye films, was thinking she might have been in the maltese Falcon but she is too young. not sure if I'm confusing her face with Mary Astor or something. She did however appear in the Fountainhead the Gary Cooper film of the Ayn Rand novel. Very striking face anyway.

I just discovered there was a 1931 version of the Maltese Falcon filmed with more direct script input from Dashiell hammett, it got a 7 on the IMDB scale so might be worth trying to see.

Also Neds a film about scottish teen gangs in the mid 70s. Pretty violent, people attacking each other with knives in the school they're attending, beating people with frying pans and threatening each other with crossbows. Maybe that isn't that far up the scale of what happens at schools I don't know, didn't happen at mine anyway. But this was way before Columbine etc.
Seemed redolent of Ken Loach and the protagonist's father was played by an actor I thinnk Loach has used several times

That actor playing the father is Peter Mullan the director. & he seems to turn up in a load of similar films that kind of gritty working class realism or something.

I Wish (2011; 4/5)
Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters (2012; 3/5)
The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984; repeat viewing; 3/5)
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004; 2nd viewing; 3/5)
The Past (2013; 4.5/5)

The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese, 1988)
The Jungle Book (Korda, 1942)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Gilliam, 1998 - rewatch)
Point Blank (Boorman, 1967 - rewatch)
An Inn in Tokyo (Ozu, 1935)
The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins (Blank, 1969)
Cría Cuervos (Saura, 1976)
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)

The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940) - the perfect film, in a way you couldn't apply perfect to a piece of music or a book like you can to this.

Elysium worse than Alice but not by much. Burton's film at least has a kind of twisted panache to its visuals and is going for broad from the start. Elysium just falls apart
after the first half hour for me.

Moneyball (7/10)
Justin de Marseilles (7/10)
Lumiere d'Ete (8/10)
Jurassic Park (6/10)
Benjamin (6/10)

watched National Lampoons Xmas vacation for the first time in years -- the opening animation is bizarre enough but i was even more surprised to see that Angelo Badalamenti did the music (and i guess not even the title song) -- it might be impossible to create original christmas music and have it sound traditional, i guess he gets some credit as some of these are catchy-ish in a rebecca black earworm way but mostly theyre disastrous; besides that, it holds up p well, we were entertained - it's m/l a 3 stooges movie w/ 1 stooge - 8/10

Did animated opening sequences all but disappear after the 80s?

not sure if I'm confusing her face with Mary Astor or something

uh she won an Oscar for Hud, was married to Roald Dahl and appeared in Altman's Cookie's Fortune

Parkland which was interesting to some degree but may have been no better than watching a drama doc.
& did leave me wondering how mixed a hospital in Texas in 1963 was. I enjoyed it I guess, but it does seem to be a bit flat.
I had the whole luxury cinema to myself so wonder if this has got any level of audience.
I saw Counsellor with one other person in the audience too.

I went at the Early Bird price time which may be set up because there would be less audience at that time of day anyway. Wonder how low an audience you need to get before it ceases to be worthwhile showing the film. I think they skipped sowing ads cos I was in there alone.

I would assume that if there was going to be nobody in a film showing they wouldn't go ahead with the showing. Or is it automated to such an extent that it would be more effort to cancel than continue? These are the first showings of the day but not having been into the technical area of a cinema I don't know what the set up is.
I heard several years ago that a film cassette or cartridge couldn't be rewound once started. Assume that technology has moved beyond that by now. Can't time when I heard or read that, so not sure how many years ago that was assuming it was over the last decade, possibly a little longer. Are cinemas showing discs or anything similar these days which would be a lot more random access?

not sure if I'm confusing her face with Mary Astor or something

uh she won an Oscar for Hud, was married to Roald Dahl and appeared in Altman's Cookie's Fortune

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Monday, December 9, 2013 5:24 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She's also the older woman in Breakfast at Tiffanys I think

Pretty sure cinemas are contracted to show a film a certain amount of times, so they'd have to screen it even if it's to no-one. People turn up late anyway sometimes.

Leviathan - first and last 10 minutes were the best bits, can't say I've ever seen anything like this before. A good half of the audience bailed out before the end, not sure if they were expecting a Morgan Freeman narration or what. (4/5)

Computer Chess - not really the nostalgic comedy it was marketed as, although the strangeness wasn't quite strange enough either. Worth seeing though. (4/5)

i loved leviathan and am considering getting a copy to put on loop in the background when i'm sleeping. the gopro sections of leviathan where the camera is on a rope and flying wildly from the mast are really difficult and beautiful; the horizon switches and you rapidly sway from watching birds above you to a shift on the horizon and now the birds are below you and the sea is the sky. not recommended if you're squeamish about watching hundreds of fish get hacked up into pieces; mammalian empathy means i don't really count bugs or fish as especially sentient but this gets kinda uncomfortable in a watching-a-kid-kill-ants way after awhile. great credits; all the fish are listed as cast members by latin name.