Last (x) movies you saw

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

Ah, ok. That is otm.

Wow, I didn't know this existed: http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/aya-of-yop-city

big fan of the comic series, would love to see this

Billy Liar (Schlesinger, 1962)
Belle de Jour (Buñuel, 1967)
Paisan (Rossellini, 1946)
Day of Wrath (Dreyer, 1943)
The Long Voyage Home (Ford, 1940)
An American In Paris (Minnelli, 1951)
Pain & Gain (Bay, 2013)

This year so far:

Pacific Rim (2013, del Toro)
Saving Mr. Banks (2013, John Lee Hancock)
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013, Abrams)
Frozen (2013, Buck & Lee)
World War Z (2013, Forster)
Wolf of Wall Street, the (2013, Scorsese)

What can I say, I'm not watching a lot right now.

Fascination (Rollin)- so, so great; the bad-dream atmosphere reminds me a little of Bunuel or Lynch in places and that last scene in the dovecote (rookery? whatever it's called) is gorgeous
The Fearless Vampire Killers, Or, Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck (Polanski)- an absolute turd; fails in almost every possible way. Komeda tries his best, I like the poster, and the opening credits are nice I guess?
Jodorowsky's Dune (Pavich)- it would have been an absolute disaster but I could listen to Jodorowsky talk about it for hours. Do wish it had spent more time with Brontis, since he seemed to have some understandably ambivalent feelings about the whole endeavor
Diabolique (Clouzot)
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (Fiennes)- immensely enjoyable. Maybe a little light on argument in favor of entertainment? I'm not really qualified to say. Was pleasantly surprised (just a moment ago) to learn the director used to work with Peter Greenaway
The Cat O'Nine Tails (Argento)- probably the best of the "animal trilogy"; the James Franciscus/Karl Malden pair is certainly more fun than either Tony Musante or Michael Brandon
Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Argento)- one of the few Argento I hadn't seen before, and the only one from his "classic" period. Brandon sucks, as noted above, but Mimsy Farmer is wonderful. And that ending sequence! This is a weird fucking movie you guys.

Ratings proudly attached:

Concerning Violence (7/10)
Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere (6.5/10)
Blue Collar (8/10)
Mugshot (7/10)
Guidelines (7/10)
Beyond Clueless (7/10)
A Very Special Favor (5/10)
The Killing (8.5/10)
The Client (6/10)
The Kids Are All Right (7/10)
Jesus’ Son (7.5/10)
Je t'aime je t'aime
Primal Fear (6.5/10)

I didn’t attach a rating to Je t'aime je t'aime. I want to see it again--whatever I give it would be too low, as I typically drifted a bit. But I did like it. So obviously a precursor to Groundhog Day, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I’m sure lots else.

Thought Laura Linney gave the best performance in Primal Fear, not Norton (kind of showy). I’ve never seen her so hard-bitten.

Utamaro and His Five Women (Mizoguchi, 1946)
Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Ozu, 1947)
L'Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)
Godzilla (Edwards, 2014)
Limelight (Chaplin, 1952)
Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? (Ozu, 1932)
Much Ado About Nothing (Whedon, 2012)

what'd you think of Much Ado

I want to see it but I've been kinda meh about making the effort

It was pretty, and there were lols aplenty at the wordplay (I hadn't read the play, so it was all new to me) and Fillion and one of the Buffy goobers as cops. I had trouble getting my head around the anachronistic behavior of some of the characters in a modern-day setting, especially Hero swooning on being accused instead of busting out a load of "what is this paternalistic bullshit?!?!?!" And Claudio and Leonato being instantly willing to believe the worst. Beatrice and Benedick's sparring was fun.

WmC, how did u see Utamaro?

Hulu+/Criterion

An Autumn Afternoon (Ozu, 1962) - looking great and shiny in the restore.
One Day Pina Asked Me and The man with the suitcase (Chantal Akerman, 1982) - talked more about it on the thread dedicated to Akerman. These monthly screens are a highlight of the cinema going year.
A Chris Marker programme at the Whitechapel: Sunday in Peking (1956), If I had Four Camels (1966). The latter is a predecessor to Sans Soleil, the mind is alert to all and the words are there to match. He was such a great writer, truly curious. Would've made a great teacher in the way he is able to give matter in a way that allows a response for more conversation. He never dictates.

It was pretty, and there were lols aplenty at the wordplay (I hadn't read the play, so it was all new to me) and Fillion and one of the Buffy goobers as cops. I had trouble getting my head around the anachronistic behavior of some of the characters in a modern-day setting, especially Hero swooning on being accused instead of busting out a load of "what is this paternalistic bullshit?!?!?!" And Claudio and Leonato being instantly willing to believe the worst. Beatrice and Benedick's sparring was fun.

I had affection for it despite thinking that the woman cast as Beatrice wasn't very good.

Also there was a terrible doc about Marker's first film, when he was given some more money by the French govt to cover the Helsinki Olympics. The bits of the doc itself were great but the filmmaker is a terrible writer -- she was too in thrall of Marker -- It didn't help that she didn't have resources unfortunately. In the best section, where she talks about the film itself she refers to what William Klein went on to do in the crowd scenes but she never had the footage from his films (or wasn't allowed to show any). I've seen the films so knew about the wide angle shots in Algiers but you couldn't do a direct comparison.

Resurrection (1980, Petrie) 6/10
Out of the Furnace (2013, Cooper) 5/10
*Othello (1952, Welles) 10/10
The Future (2011, July) 5/10
Providence (1977, Resnais) 6/10
Big Trouble (1986, Cassavetes) 4/10
In the Name of the Father (1971, Bellocchio) 7/10
Heavy Traffic (1973, Bakshi) 7/10
Drinking Buddies (2013, Swanberg) 6/10
Coonskin (1975, Bakshi)6/10
*Monsieur Verdoux (1947, Chaplin) 8/10
Home Town (1930, Mizoguchi) 6/10
White Threads of the Waterfall (1933, Mizoguchi) 7/10
Miyamoto Musashi (1944, Mizoguchi) 7/10
Outrageous! (1977, Benner) 6/10
Under the Skin (2013, Glazer) 7/10
The Human Comedy (1943, Brown) 6/10
*Dr. Strangelove, or:... (1964, Kubrick) 10/10
A Geisha (1953, Mizoguchi) 8/10

*rewatches

A Thousand Clowns (1965)
Fatso (1980)
Labor Day (2013)

Movies I've watched this month

Troll Hunter 6/10
Inside Llewyn Davis 8/10
Clear History 4/10
Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead 8/10
Ikiru 7/10
Withnail and I 10/10
Please Give 4/10