Last (x) movies you saw

The Graduate (Nichols, 1967) 8/10
Das Fraulein (Staka, 2006) 8/10
Pierrot Le Fou (Godard, 1965) 8/10
Scarface (De Palma, 1983) 9/10
The Flowers of St. Francis (Rossellini, 1950) 9/10
Through the Olive Trees (Kiarostami, 1994) 9/10
The Circle (Panahi, 2000) 9/10
Queen of Hearts (Donzelli, 2010) 5/10
A Moment of Innocence (Makhmalbaf, 1996) 9/10
Offside (Panahi, 2006) 9/10

Dry summer
Terror 2000

Gotta say I'm really enjoying my mubi subscription, it's like Netflix but for films

me too. they put up some really weird films which is fun. looking forward to watching Hausu

Dry Summer is great, isn't it? There was another Erksan-film on Danish mubi, but I missed it. I also just missed Terror 2000, but I didn't really prioritize it.

Tale of Cinema (Hong, 2005)
Viridiana (Buñuel, 1961)
Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)
Birdsong (Serra, 2008)
The Big Combo (Lewis, 1955)
The World (Jia, 2004)
I Hired a Contract Killer (Kaurismäki, 1990)
I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You (Ainouz & Gomes)

Shorts:
Letter (Loznitsa, 2013)
Castro Street (Baillie, 1966)
Women Reply: Our Bodies, Our Sex (Varda, 1975)

If Birdsong pops up on your mubi, do check it out, it's really something! Also the Ainouz & Gomes one with the long title, though it's a bit hard to recommend a film where the subtitles basically doesn't work. I did not get the plot... But the pictures were beautiful. There seems to be a really cool film-underground in Brazil, I saw films by both Ainouz (Praia do Futuro, a bit bland) and Gomes (The Man in the Crows, weird but alluring) at CPHPIX along with a lot of other strange and lofi stuff. Nothing was better than Neighbouring Sounds, but it was still really cool.

Reality (Garrone, 3.5/5)
The Adventures Of Robert Macaire (Epstein, 4.5/5)

oh i remember i travel because i have to. i thought it was very pretty, yeah, its looseness kinda heightening the value of the images - those video-bleary columns hit by sun toward the end, the sort of halting presence of some of the more docu segments. interesting. was thinking about neighbouring sounds after the strange little cat keep up; two new domestic cinemas.

how's tale of cinema btw? i watch one of the hong movies that diehards rep for about once a year & it was the next on my list

I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You (Ainouz & Gomes)

Sounds fantastic - the sertao is a great setting. Source for much, great Brazilian cinema.

Yeah, the sertao is great. One of the other films at PIX was called Road to Ythaca, and was a no-budget roadmovie made on the sertao for, like, 1500 dollars. And it was beautiful. They're lucky like that.

Tale of Cinema was cool. The plot was tricky and funny, etc. It was quite a bit darker than I'm used to from Hong, but I've normally seen his later stuff, so that might be it. Definitely one of the better Hong's.

Citizen Koch (6.5)
Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (7.5)
Detroit Rock City (5.0)
The Double (7.0)
A Hard Day’s Night (7.5)
54 (6.0)
Boyhood (7.5)
MASH (7.0)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (8.5)
The American (6.0)
Brewster McCloud (5.5)

Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her was a lot better than I ever would have guessed, Detroit Rock City much worse. And I learned once again that I prefer Help! to A Hard Day’s Night.

Escape From Alcatraz (7/10)
Guardians of the Galaxy (6/10)
The Opposite of Sex (rewatch, 6/10)
buncha "Unsolved Mysteries" reruns (11/10)

The Opposite of Sex (rewatch, 6/10)

Were you more enthusiastic about it before? I loved this when it was new, but haven't seen it in about fifteen years.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier 4/10
Locke 5/10
Mistaken for Strangers 6/10
Black Pond 5/10
Calvary 7/10

Christina Ricci always the weakest element; she tries so damn hard. Lisa Kudrow and (even better) Martin Donovan are the ones to watch.

Anyone else see "Calvary" yet? Im eager to hear what people here thought of it. Its worth a watch but not without its flaws either. Brendan Gleeson is getting some Oscar buzz for it.

Moebius (Kim Ki-duk, 2013) - Or In the Realm of the Senses played for laughs! Genuinely funny, disturbing.

Bad Words - terrible.

xxp I saw it the other month with a friend who absolutely hated it for being ludicrously overwrought (as in the sheer cartoonish malevolence of just about everyone in the town but esp little finger carcetti), whereas I enjoyed it for pretty much that reason.

Oh and gleeson is great

Yeah I thought the characters were a bit OTT myself. Gillen sounded like an Irish Batman. There was a lot of dialogue that called too much attention to itself also ("If this was the third act what would happen?" GAH). Gleeson brilliant as usual.

Put that stuff down to the writer spending too much time with his wasteman brother

Dead Reckoning (1947, Cromwell) 6/10
Stella Maris (1918, Neilan/Pickford) 7/10
*The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014, Anderson) 7/10
*Wuthering Heights (1954, Bunuel) 9/10
The Great Madcap (1949, Bunuel) 6/10
The Strange Little Cat (2013, Zürcher) 8/10
The Long Good Friday (1980, Mackenzie) 8/10
What Now? Remind Me (2013, Pinto) 7/10
Tall Stories (1988, Pinto) 6/10
Hour of the Gun (1967, J Sturges) 6/10
City of Pirates (1983, Ruiz) 8/10
7th Heaven (1927, Borzage) 8/10

man push cart. ehh idk he's clearly pulling it. D-

Heavy Metal (Potterton)- This kind of sucks, but in a way I like, if that makes any sense. Like the stuff holding it back (the inexcusably awful wraparound story/structure, the totally thoughtless mix of tones and styles, the weirdly chunky pacing) is charming in a sort of un-businesslike way? And that first segment is an unabashed ripoff of Dan O'Bannon and Moebius's "The Long Tomorrow" (to the extent that I'm surprised not to see Moebius/Giraud's name acknowledged anywhere in the credits with a "based on..." like Richard Corben and Bernie Wrightson were for their direct adaptations) but it's a good ripoff, aside from the wank material for 13-year-old boys that infects every other segment but O'Bannon's WWII horror short (the filmmakers make up for it by having this be the entirety of the Corben segment). Stupid as hell, would probably watch again.

*Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma)- Still brilliant. I haven't gotten into his post-Untouchables filmography yet (aside from seeing Mission: Impossible in its theatrical run, and discovering Massive Attack and Pulp thanks to the Mobile, AL public library's habit of stocking its CD section with too many soundtracks and some dumbass label guy just licensing every song he could with the word "spy" in the title) but this and Blow Out are the best De Palmas I've seen yet, with the technical brilliance and nasty satire working perfectly together.

The Warriors (Hill)- Not counting this as a rewatch since it's the first time I've seen the unadulterated original theatrical version (the DVD director's cut is just pointlessly shit). It was a little irritating seeing this in a theater full of people who started out laughing at everything (including what I'm pretty sure was the same dude who shows up most weeks at the Trocadero's Movie Monday and has an incredibly loud and distinctive, fully-enunciated HA), the joke being, I guess, "the seventies happened," but eventually they no longer felt like they had to prove they could dig it (do you see what I did there haha please kill me) and the movie itself stepped up with the shit they should have been saving their enthusiasm for (Baseball Furies et al) and a good time was had by all. Like every Walter Hill movie I've seen, it's a much quieter, slower affair than anyone raised on post-Tony Scott action movies expects, and that's a great thing.

Snowpiercer (Bong)- LOVED. I am if anything too willing to suspend my disbelief for someone whose work I admire, and admittedly that let me paper over some logic and story problems (the underwhelming Ed Harris cameo, the upper-class riot at the end that makes no sense except as a Bioshock homage, that security guy who, come on, no, he was fucking dead) for everything else (the production design, Song Kang-Ho and Go Ah-Sung, TILDA SWINTON, the sniper faceoff). I might have more calm and measured thoughts on this after it's had some time to settle in.

*The Game (Fincher)- Mixed. I haven't seen this in like 14-15 years, and ended up liking it more than I did at the time (it's held up better than Seven, at any rate) but the screenplay (by a pair of ridiculous hacks responsible who haven't done anything else even remotely good, including part of the shared blame credit for Catwoman) is just so cheap that any sense of consequences goes out the window after about halfway through. The script is so basic (and those guys' CV so fucking terrible) that I have to wonder if the little playful nods to vastly superior paranoia thrillers (the film loop from The Parallax View, the overflowing bloody toilet from The Conversation) came from Fincher. At least Harris Savides makes the whole thing look gorgeous, with a really well-considered color scheme that still feels natural.

*Lost in Translation (Coppola)- Rewatched kind of by accident thinking it was another Savides joint (it's not; it's Spike Jonze regular Lance Acord, and Savides only started working with Coppola on Somewhere). Still a spectacularly well-shot movie, which does a little to make up for the shameful lack of curiosity and borderline racism (I feel that it comes down juuust barely on the right side of that, but "failure to render the Japanese characters as human beings" is nothing to be proud of). Bill Murray is still fun, but this much later it's not exactly a revelation that Murray can do Sad. And I'm not sure how much of the like I have for Johansson is just for the costume design, because she is adorable here. 's ok.

*Odilon Redon or The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity (Maddin)- Started watching Guy Maddin, had a sudden sleep attack 20 minutes into Careful and had to put it off until another day with more free time. Rgh. Still one of my favorite short films ever.

Mother Joan of the Angels (Kawalerowicz)- This was kind of devastating. I didn't actually know going in that it was loosely based on the Devils of Loudun case, which gradually dawned on me when characters started discussing the late, lamented "Father Garniec." Lucyna Winnicka is wonderful as Mother Joan (I would even favorably compare her to Vanessa Redgrave in the same role in Russell's The Devils), with a really impressively athletic, dance-like performance, and there are some Dreyeresque full-frame closeups (including a really frightening closeup of panicking horses near the very end).

Jump (Konwicki) (aka Somersault or Salto)- This was a bit rougher going; I'm not sure how much of that was deliberate obtuseness, poor translation (or idioms that just couldn't translate), or drastically different cultural context, but I was flailing for a while. Also not the most visually stylish movie, especially right after Mother Joan. Still, though, Zbigniew Cybulski is a hugely charismatic weirdo (I love how his leather-jacketed Man of Mystery is constantly tripping over shit and is never, ever "cool," just a totally bemusing, flop-sweaty, anxious mess) and there is no one who can convince me that David Lynch hasn't seen this dance scene and taken notes.

Corben's Den is mainly notable for the variety of bodies, bodily transformations and stunning rendering techniques; the story never had much going for it. I've never seen the animated film but I've heard Den in particular was a mess.
News of a comic adaptation never brings a smile to me but the looming prospect of a live action remake of Heavy Metal does sound very interesting. How on earth would they do Den? How many statuesque actors can do action and drama while naked?
Also wondering if they would change the story roster to go with the retrospective Heavy Metal canon.

I've always wanted to see a nudist drama with well known actors just to see what it'd be like. I'm sure the public would freak out and hate it regardless of merit.

I thought Calvary was pretty good. Nice looking too. not much to say about it.
I don't know if Gleeson did one of this year's best performances but it would be nice to see him win an Oscar.

Your writeup on The Game sent me to IMDB to see who wrote it, and holy shit, those guys have carved out quite a career for themselves—to quote Grosse Pointe Blank, "it reads like a demon's resume." The only thing they've written that I found even remotely enjoyable was Primeval, the giant-crocodile movie. And, okay, the ending of Terminator 3 was pretty good in a Beneath the Planet of the Apes kind of way. But other than that...those guys are true garbage merchants.

Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut, 1960)
* Don't Look Back (Pennebaker, 1967)
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (Godard, 1967)
Shin Heike Monogatari (Mizoguchi, 1955) -- at the Birmingham Museum of Art's Japanese Film Festival
Diary of a Chambermaid (Buñuel, 1964)
* Snowpiercer (Bong Joon Ho, 2013) fulfilling my promise to pay for a viewing to make up for torrenting it to see it the first time

*The Fisher King 8/10
How Green Was My Valley 8/10
Under The Skin 8/10
*On The Waterfront 10/10
Bernie 6/10

Just saw Step Up: All In this weekend. The 3D dancing was entertaining but every emotional moment in it was absurd. Favorite non-dancing moment was either the lead dude running into his dance crew of like 12 people standard around their studio in the morning and being told they were giving up the dream and heading back to miami (each person had one suitcase and they appeared to have just one cab waiting for them), the lead dude screaming "I live in a tiny freaking storage closet!" during his big moment or the hammy ballroom instructor saying "do the math - he was her back-up dancer, now he's her private dancer."

Also the plot hinged around performing on a VH1 reality dance competition named the Vortex hosted by a woman who acted like a cross between Lady Gaga and the MC from Cabaret. Would watch!

12 people standing around, rather. only one or two actually spoke when they dropped the bomb on their crew leader

Salvo (2013) 6/10
Only Lovers Left Alive (2014) 7/10
Abuse of Weakness (2013) 6/10
Sounder (1972) 8/10

I'm wondering if the 1972 Best Picture lineup is the best of the last forty years.

The Emigrants

The One I Love. Just finished watching it on Amazon. Really, really well-written; it starts out as an indie romantic dramedy, then about halfway through it gets Twilight Zone-ish really suddenly, and before the end it's almost horror. Never misses a step, plot-wise, and the two lead actors—Andrew Duplass and Elisabeth Moss, who are never offscreen—are terrific.

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (7.0)
The Dog (7.5)
Dog Day Afternoon (8.0)
The Long Goodbye (8.5)
Begin Again (5.5)
Images (5.5)
California Split (9.0)
Tanner '88 (7.5)
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (7.0)
Rich Hill (6.5)

I was predisposed to really like Rich Hill--from the trailer, it looked like a good documentary companion for Boyhood--and it's beautiful to look at, but for whatever reason, I just didn't find the three boys that compelling. Should see it, though. David Edelstein gave it a good review:

http://www.vulture.com/2014/08/movie-review-rich-hill.html

Blue Ruin 7/10
Mud 6/10
Only Lovers Left Alive 5/10 (The scenes of the couple driving around an eerie, deserted Detroit were fantastic and there was an "end of history" angle that could have been explored more. Instead, Jarmusch was more concerned with giving props to Jack bloody White.)

Westfront 1918 (1930, Pabst) 7/10
Jealousy (2013, Garrel) 7/10
I Stole a Million (1939, Tuttle) 5/10
The Road Back (1937, Whale) 6/10
Letter from Siberia (1957, Marker) 8/10
Zulu (1964, Endfield) 7/10
*All the President’s Men (1976, Pakula) 9/10
Fifi Howls from Happiness (2013, Farahani) 8/10
*Blonde Venus (1932, Sternberg) 7/10
That Man from Rio (1964, de Broca) 7/10
*The Devil Is a Woman (1935, Sternberg) 6/10
*The World According to Garp (1982, Hill) 6/10

*rewatches

Out of curiocity, which Sternberg-Dietrich collab do you like the best. (Both Venus and Devil seem admittedly to be for the fanatics.)

Blonde Venus is a total bore.

This ...

http://sunsetgun.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cb7469e2017eea5fc051970d-400wi

Not boring.

jack white is a bozo but that was a really well measured, meaningful moment in that film, i think, one realer & more successful than the film's other tributes to art by virtue of being unexpected, rooted in the contemporary; people just trying to comprehend a building with the same distance & remove one feels from an artist. just that moment of stillness & casuality it allows, this kind of dumbstruck interruption. really nice. it's so much a more daring, adventurous tribute than one directed at ~the moody ruins of detroit~ more broadly.

Blonde Venus is sufficiently crazy to be unboring, esp that bit role from Hattie McDaniel.

Easily Shanghai Express for me. Best shadows, best train, plus Anna May Wong.

http://teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Anna-May-Wong-2-Marlene-Dietrich-Shanghai-Express.jpg

Devil Is a Woman is basically a sex comedy, at least up til Lionel Atwill beats the crap out of her.

xpost sorry for me it just felt awkward and it was like jarmusch was using the scene as an excuse to give his buddy a shout out. even on the scale of late 20th-early 21st century century music, giving jack white a tribute is laughable imo.

i couldn't agree more musically but it didn't feel like that, to me. it just feels fresher & more valuable to make a film about some stonery rock guy who loves jack white than it does to make a film about another guy who ~loves thoreau~, though, you know? embracing the present is the only way to make the guy's canon something more vibrant than just consensus; claire denis & mark twain are both on the picture wall, & that's important i think. jack white is a bozo i repeat is a capital b bozo but his name is a punctum amongst the kind of autopilot gravitas conferred by, whatever, keats, or whoever else crops up.

I think all in that string of 7 are great, but I'd probably rank them:

Scarlet Empress
Blonde Venus
Shanghai Express
Dishonored
Morocco
The Devil is a Woman
The Blue Angel

The middle 5 really in any order, tho.

oh i forgot to count The Blue Angel; first or second.

Nah, Von Sternberg needed Hollywood's help.

Or at least their glittery resources.

what did Emil Jannings ever do to you?

cockadoodledoo

The Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014) 6/10
To Catch a Thief (Hitchcock, 1955) 8/10
Two Days, One Night (Dardenne bros, 2014) 7/10

Tristana (Bunuel, 1970) 8/10
Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957) 8/10
Jeanne Dielman 23, Quai Du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975) 9/10
Please Sir! (Stuart, 1971) 5/10
Boy Meets Girl (Carax, 1984) 6/10
Uzak (Ceylan, 2002) 8/10
Christmas Evil (Jackson, 1980) 7/10
Le Beau Serge (Chabrol, 1958) 7/10