Last (x) movies you saw

err.."CY"

Toute Une Nuit (Akermann, 1982) - What this woman does with bodies being lit by street lamps (through curtains and doors) is nothing less than miraculous. Her direction of what, over 50 actors and actresses to convey various stages of grief, longing, the waiting for love that will come one day (but when?!) is another miracle. This film was full of them. Just needed a bigger screen, don't think the ICA one is up to the job but its a minor complaint.

I like the way Woman Next Door bubbles and boils til that scene where Depardieu lashes out at the lawn party.

The Green Room must be my favorite of his last ten years, tho. He said he regretted not casting a "real actor" in the lead, but FT's halting, recessive quality works p well I think.

That's what it lets it down for me.

Depardieu's amor fou freakout reminds me of Gaston Modot's
at the top of Buñuel's "L'age d'Or".

I'm with you Morbs on Truffaut in "The Green Room". Quiet, sad and still creepily obsessive.

From CPHPIX:

Our Sunhi (Hong, 2013)
Free Range (Öunpuu, 2013)
Goltzius and the Pelican Company (Greenaway, 2012)
Jealousy (Garrel, 2013)
Why Don't You Play in Hell (Sono, 2013)
When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (Porumboiu, 2013)
Stray Dogs (Tsai, 2013)
Manuscripts Don't Burn (Rasouluf, 2013)
Éden (Safadi, 2012)
Der Samurai (Kleinert, 2014)
A Touch of Sin (Jia, 2013)
Bastards (Denis, 2013)*
Real (Kurosawa, 2013)
For Those in Peril (Wright, 2013)
Luton (Konstantatos, 2013)
Blind (Vogt, 2014)
Small Homeland (Rosetto, 2013)
The Quite Roar (Hellström, 2013)
Life of Riley (Resnais, 2014)
Story of My Death (Serra, 2013)
History of Fear (Naishtat, 2014)
Casa Grande (Barbosa, 2013)
The Zero Theorem (Gilliam, 2013)
Heli (Escalante, 2013)
Hard to be a God (German, 2014)
Road to Ythaca (Diógenes, Parente, Pretti & Pretti, 2010)
Stranger by the Lake (Guiraudie, 2013)
Norte, the End of History (Diaz, 2013)
Praia do Futuro (Ainouz, 2014)
The Man of the Crowd (Gomes & Guimarães, 2013)
Moebius (Kim, 2013)
3x3D (Greenaway, Pêra & Godard, 2013)
Like Father, Like Son (Kore-eda, 2013)
Stray Dogs (Tsai, 2013)*
Young & Beautiful (Ozon, 2013)
The Congress (Folman, 2013)
Rio 2096: A Story of Love and Fury (Bolognezi, 2013)
Rio Belongs to Us (Pretti, 2013)
Tom at the Farm (Xavier, 2013)

Yup, I saw Stray Dogs twice. It's that good. Best film I've seen since Uncle Boonmee. And I just finished writing about the last ones, so now I've written them all up on my blog: http://centrifugue.blogspot.dk/search/label/PIX14 If anyone is interested.

Also watched a few things afterwards:

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Anderson, 2014)
Detour (Ulmer, 1945)
The Intouchables (Nakache & Toledano, 2011)
The Bothersome Man (Lien, 2006)
The Kid with a Bike (Dardenne, 2011)

Grand Budapest Hotel isn't as good as Moonrise Kingdom. Intouchables isn't as bad as everyone says it is. The Bothersome Man is a pretty fun Norwegian satire, a bit like Roy Anderson in places.

wow Fred... that's a lot

Stray Dogs wobbly for me the first time, i will try it again

My job - at another film festival - ended right before, so I had time for just watching films and not doing much else. But there were people going to the cinema from 9:30 to the midnight movie, watching 50-60 films over the two weeks. I don't get how they could do that, 39 was a bit too many for me.

Stray Dogs is just unlike anything I've ever seen, I think. I love late Tsai, stuff like I Don't Want to Sleep Alone and the Walker-shorts with the monk, and the digital, guerilla-like aestethic of Stray Dogs fits these themes amazingly well. The second time I watched it I was also quite surprised at how brisk the film seemed. Once I knew where the film was going, it seemed to repeat itself much less. The red room arrives very early on, which means the blue room isn't far behind, which means the black room-sequence is coming soon. Those last two shots are still taxing, though, but I like them.

Agree with you about Tom At The Farm's psychological incoherence, Frederik, though I liked it a little more than you. Will look out for Stray Dogs.

It just feels very theatrical to me, I guess. Very much like an adaptation. And the filmic qualities are there, but they seem quite superfluous to the story, which remains very much a chamber-piece. Have you seen other Dolan? And if so, is it better? I feel like I shouldn't write him off just yet, though he does sorta annoy me.

If anyone has 25 minutes to spare on some slooooow cinema, the first Walker-short is on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/49339358. There are some very pretty pictures, and a great punch-line! The shorts needs to be collected somewhere, they are quite impressive. I think, from skimming imdb, there might be six of them, which puts the collected runtime to something like 2½ hours. I'd pay to see that.

Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012)
Jules et Jim (Truffaut, 1962)
Land of Milk and Honey (Etaix, 1971)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hamer, 1949)
Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972)

i watched blue ruin -- p deec moral revenge thing; is tense but also nicely grounded in real world logistics etc; end is not entirely ideal but it works; this guy is a good actor, hope he works more -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devin_Ratray

~3/5

Have you seen other Dolan? And if so, is it better?

No, it was the first one I've seen. I started thinking that with that lack of psychological naturalism, it must be aiming for something else, like it being an allegory. So then I went down that road, but what the allegorical message was eluded me. Then I noticed that brother kept wearing a stars-and-stripes bomber jacket and that Rufus Wainwright "I'm so tired of America" song played over the end credits and I thought: God, please no.

The Hermann-esque score, contriving to have it be taken as a suspense thriller, just didn't come off for me.

But hey, Dolan's 25. God knows I'd have made missteps worse than that if I was a 25-year-old.

The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh,2013)

This is a really powerful doc where Panh a Khmer Rouge survivor talks about his extraordinary life and uses Clay models and old KR propaganda footage to recreate the atrocities. The contrast between his happy childhood and the hellish existence in labour camps is so saddening.

Primary Colors (7/10)
The Best Man (7.5/10)
The Unknown Known (7/10)
The China Syndrome (10/10)
Cleopatra (6.5/10)
Finding Vivian Maier (7.5/10)
The Straight Story (10/10)
Auto Focus (6.5/10)
Slums: Cities of Tomorrow (6.5/10)
Hardcore (6.0/10)

Except for the four or five scenes where George C. Scott fulminates, Hardcore wasn’t bad. Someone should write a piece about the run of late-'70s/early-'80s studio releases that tried to outdo each other in luridness: Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Hardcore, Cruising, Star 80, probably others.

collected Ladislaw Starewicz shorts (technically brilliant, but aside from The Mascot, hard to get into- they lean a little too hard on cloying sentiment, slapstick or a severely misjudged or at least culturally incompatible idea of cuteness)

Room 237 (I kind of loved this! I like the non-judgmental approach to even the batshit Apollo guy, the mixing together of commentaries and general flow and essay-like structure of the movie, and even the soundtrack- now I know why Death Waltz put it out on vinyl; parts of it are like a mix of Claudio Simonetti, early John Carpenter and Kraftwerk's Radio-Activity)

collected Quay Brothers shorts (finally spent some more time with the "Phantom Museums" DVD set ported over from the BFI's restoration- such an improvement over the old Kino DVD it's like seeing them for the first time again)

The Cremator (I need to see all the Juraj Herz I possibly can now, this was glorious)

Blow-Up

Oh, and the Quay Brothers documentary Through the Weeping Glass, shot not 15 minutes from where I live. It's still weird to see them shooting in digital video (In Absentia was their last shot in 35mm; I have my fingers crossed for Maska, since I don't know how something more like their classic puppet films will turn out in DV) but they make the best of it. There are some wonderful shots of curators' or librarians' hands manipulating some old pop-up/cutaway anatomy books where a third and fourth hand subtly sneaks into the frame, all of them wearing identical red nail polish like in this Guy Bourdin photo.

Tom at the Cabin (Xavier Dolan, 2012) - didn't get much out of it either. You don't care to work but he wants to work in the farm in the first place, and then why he leaves, or why the pretense to it being some prison when it really isn't.

Les Annees 80 (Chantal Akerman, 1983) - a musical like no other -- at first a set of rehearsals gradually cohering into a couple of scenes before shots of Brussels ring out. Want to watch again.

This mini-season of Akerman has been a revelation. You think its the short films and films up to Jeanne Dielman --> The Captive but there's lots to discover in between that, a whole story.

aargh that was garbled - you don't care to work out why he wants to leave/stay in the farm/what bloody for, etc.

Today just a couple of shorts on Youtube to distract myself from studying; both were uploaded by the rightsholders so they should be pretty easy to find:
Jan Lenica's Labirynt, which is beautiful- some heavy influence from Une Semaine de Bonte, and in turn, its DNA is all up in Yellow Submarine.
The Quays' Maska, which I have mixed feelings about. They're challenging themselves with this one, but it results in the most conventional film they've ever made- not some weird fantasy on a literary source, like their Gilgamesh, Schulz, etc films, but a straight adaptation that follows a sequential plot from beginning to end, complete with voiceover. The puppets are still abstracted (the main character has a bald, eyeless doll head and, memorably, breasts that look like the onion domes on a Russian church, and the male characters all have grotesque red and gold faces) but for the first time ever clearly represent human beings (well, and a killer robot) in a real space, and not only do they talk, they walk, something the Quays have been notoriously averse to animating in previous films. But holy shit, the lighting in this film! It's a step above even what they were capable of in In Absentia, only this time it's in the most richly color-saturated thing they've ever shot. A shame the people at Se-Ma-For didn't upload it at anything higher than 480p, because Youtube's compression absolutely butchers large stretches of it.

Captain America: Winter Soldier (Russo Bros, 2013) 6/10
The Double (Ayoade, 2013) 5/10
Calvary (McDonagh, 2013) 7/10
Locke (Knight, 2013) 6/10

Tenebrae (Argento, 1982) 8/10
Tatie Danielle (Chatiliez, 1990) 6/10
The Leopard (Visconti, 1963) 8/10
The Haunting (Wise, 1963) 7/10
Kiss of Death (Hathaway, 1947) 7/10
Rome Open City (Rossellini, 1946) 8/10
Sansho Dayu (Mizogouchi, 1954) 10/10
Shadows (Cassavetes, 1959) 6/10
The Beast (Borowczyk, 1975) 7/10
Motel Hell (Connor, 1980) 5/10

Tenebrae (Argento, 1982) 8/10

I know, right?

Reunion in Vienna (1933, Franklin) 7/10
*Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, Coen, Coen) 8/10
Adam & Yves (1974, de Rome) 5/10
*Manhattan Melodrama (1934, Van Dyke) 6/10
Slap the Monster on Page One (1972, Bellocchio) 7/10
Love Is Strange (2014, Sachs) 6/10
Devil in the Flesh (1986, Bellocchio) 5/10
The Eyes, the Mouth (1982, Bellocchio) 6/10
Manakamana (2013, Spray, Velez) 7/10
*An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012, Nance) 8/10
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976, Ross) 7/10
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970, Wilder) 6/10

i need to rewarch llewyn again, i bought it on bluray

Noah (Aronofsky, 2014) - 7/10
The Happiest Days of Your Life (Frank Launder, 1950) - 8/10
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Webb, '2014) - 6/10
Dom Hemingway (Richard Shepard, 2013) - 3/10
Jodorowsky's Dune (Frank Pavich, 2013) - 8/10
The French Connection II (Frankenheimer, 1975) - 6/10
A Night in the Woods (Richard Parry, 2012) - 2/10
Flesh + Blood (Verhoven, 1985) - 7/10
The Wicker Man (Final Cut) (Hardy, 1973) - 9/10
Le Samouraï (Mellville, 1967) - 8/10

Locke (Knight, 2013) - better as a play, but hey Kiarostami has done it so its ok I guess :) The script had to push in a way to make contrived, to say the least so all is left is to go on about how Hardy's performance was really good. It was fine but you know..

The Deep End (Skolimowski) 8/10
The Shout (Skolimowski) 8/10
Edipo Re (Pasolini) 9/10
Un Enfant Dans La Foule (Blain) 9/10
The Bodyguard (Fleischer) 5/10
Captain America :The Winter Soldier (??) (7/10)

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Gilliam)- it took me ages to catch up to this, and if I'm being totally honest I have to say I was a little disappointed. Plummer and Waits are marvelous, but the dependence on budget-conscious CGI after the glory days of Time Bandits, Brazil, Munchausen, etc is just depressing and Verne Troyer is awful.

L'Important C'est D'aimer (Zulawski)- my third Zulawski, and by some distance the least utterly mental. Some unshowily amazing handheld camera work, Romy Schneider and Jacques Dutronc, and that Contempt-like score from Georges Delerue...

Bonnie and Clyde (Penn)- rewatched to keep up with Robert P. Kolker's A Cinema of Loneliness. Maybe a little overpraised (or maybe I'm still a little bitter that it isn't as formally adventurous as all the new wave comparisons implied to 18-year-old me and that most of it boils down to tonal shifts and the occasional daring-for-Hollywood cut) but it's still a damn good film.

Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance- an extra on the Arrow blu-ray of White of the Eye and a solid career overview. I would have liked it if the producers spent more time with Frank Mazzola (and maybe Roeg) talking about his editing style and the troubled production of Wild Side but it's the best we're probably ever going to get. Lots of archival interviews with Cammell himself, too.

Under the Skin (Glazer)- Still digesting this but there's no way this doesn't end up as one of my favorite films of 2014.

The Third Generation (Fassbinder)- Only my second Fassbinder, and maybe not an ideal one this early? I kind of watched it out of a sense of obligation before rewatching Rivette's Le Pont du Nord. I have the barest knowledge of the historical context here but I get the strong impression that not being able to speak German is a major handicap for understanding this film well, with the sheer amount of layered dialog and the televisions that are on in the background in every single scene. It felt like trying to watch an Altman film with subtitles only.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage- I'm not really a giallo buff (Tenebre aside, I'm more a fan of Argento's supernatural horror films and borderline cases like Deep Red) but I still love this for its Morricone score and all the completely batshit diversions (the stuttering pimp, the cat-eating painter who is FEELING VERY MYSTICAL NOW, "bring in the perverts," etc).

A Fish Called Wanda- YOU'RE THE VULGARIAN, YOU FUCK/10

To Be or Not To Be (Lubitsch)
Witness for the Prosecution (Wilder)
...aaaaand all 3 of the original Star Wars trilogy just so you dont get any ideas about me lol

My first time seeing To Be or Not To Be - found it to be hilarious & beautifully razor sharp & basically marvellous

Witness for the Prosecution was a treat too...could watch old Laughton chew scenery all day, he was fabulous. And Marlene! <3

Jodorowsky's Dune

He is a such a tedious blowhard, it is a fucking mercy that piece of shit never got made.

oh it would've been terrible.

A Catered Affair...This movie is so depressing. For me it is actually scary in how depressing it is. I had only seen parts of it until last week. I have heard Bette Davis' role was not believable and a disaster but I bought it.

Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance- an extra on the Arrow blu-ray of White of the Eye and a solid career overview. I would have liked it if the producers spent more time with Frank Mazzola (and maybe Roeg) talking about his editing style and the troubled production of Wild Side but it's the best we're probably ever going to get. Lots of archival interviews with Cammell himself, too.

yeah i watched this too, i agree its disappointing in the ways you mention. feel like his widow china couldve been more forthcoming also but thats a delicate area obv. james fox has led a p interesting life, id watch a doc on him probably

I am looking forward to the feature commentary on that disc, though- it's by Sam Umland, coauthor of the A Life on the Wild Side bio of Cammell. I haven't gotten around to reading it yet but it has a reputation as well-researched and thoughtful and so on...

Only one film since my last post, but Jesus, what a film: Zulawski's La Femme Publique. Valerie Kaprisky is stunning in this (and not just because she's gorgeous and frequently nude), Francis Huster is perfect as a kind of utterly self-loathing directorial auto-critique (is his character's nationality ever confirmed, or is it- like his broader political motives- just left as a mystery? IIRC the subtitles indicate he speaks Czech and Polish during the film), and SACHA VIERNY! I love the contrast between the location shots in Paris (which are weirdly like Zulawski's empty, grey Berlin in Possession, don't remember who shot that offhand but it's not Vierny) and the Bava-esque colored-lighting excess of the film-within-a-film, which looks almost like some of his work with Peter Greenaway in places.

Ligtning (Naruse, 1952)
Dry Summer (Erksan, 1964)
Limits of Control (Jarmusch, 2009)
Memories of Underdevelopment (Alea, 1968)
Strike (Eisenstein, 1925)
Earth (Dovzhenko, 1930)*
Children of Hiroshima (Shindo, 1952)
The Chaser (Na, 2008)
The Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Medem, 1998)

Strike really surprised me, had not idea it would be so batshit insane. Like, brechtian/dada-ian in places. People imitating animals, finely dressed children dancing on tables, that whole bunch of people living in holes in the ground. Completely crazy.

what u think of that alea film

Ida was good but maybe not as hot as all the reviews suggested? Great camerawork, great acting, tight plotting and scripting but so relentlessly bleak and methodically (almost stingily) laid out as a film that I sometimes felt more experimented on than viewing. Just couldn't connect.

1960's Poland is fucking depressing.

x-post: Memories of Underdevelopment was good, and everyone should go watch it. But... I don't know, wasn't knocked over by it. When I think back on it, I can't remember that many details, not like I can with a film like Rocha's Terra am Transe, which has just come up on Mubi, and which I'm very excited to rewatch. Have you seen it and if so, what did you think? I really want to watch more south american cinema, especially from that period.

never seen it, it was in derek malcolm's century of films so sort of mindful of eventually watching it
rocha's 'deus e o diabo' is astonishingly good from around that time

Was underwhelmed by Terra em Transe but he is U+K so watch it.

Idade de Terra (his last film) is amazing. Its a weird cross between a film essay and a neo-realist film with passages of over-long improv, Cassavetes-like.

Apols but I'll put this in: Glauber Rocha/Third cinema

Check out Memories of Underdevelopment, definitely worth it.

U+K?

I think Terra am Transe might be my favourite Rocha, though I've only seen Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol and Antonio das Mortes, and Terra am Transe will be the first one I rewatch. Will check out Idade de Terra (boy, he made a lot of Terra-films, huh?) Also, for an update on Third Cinema, check out a film from 2010 called Road to Ythaca, which I watched at PIX. Made for a thousand euros, a road-movie with four mourning guys, but then also a sci-fi-flick, a ghost story, and a meta-discussion on how to make films in Brazil. Updates some Rocha-stuff. Don't know if it's possible to find, but check it out.

Urgent & Key