Last (x) movies you saw

while we're young ('15 baumbach) 9/10
black rain ('89 Imamura) 6/10
hearts of the west ('75 howard zieff) 5/10
bone ('72 larry cohen) 7/10
night moves ('13 reichardt) 4/10
it follows ('15 david Robert Mitchell) 8/10
hello I must be going (2012 todd louiso) 7/10
adore (2013 anne fontaine) 5/10
10 rillington place ('71 Fleischer) 6/10
Cinderella liberty ('73 mark rydell) 4/10
rubberneck (2012 alex karpovsky) 8/10
breathless ('83 jim McBride) 3/10
white bird in a blizzard ('14 araki) 7/10
cry of the owl ('87 chabrol) 5/10

Belle Toujours (5/10)
Les Chiméres de Svankmajer (7/10)

The Angels Share (Loach, 2012) 6/10
Law of Desire (Almodovar, 1987) 7/10
Rififi (Dassin, 1955) 8/10

Documentaries:

Milius (Figueroa/Knutson, 2013) 5/10
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (Kijak, 2006) 6/10
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (Morgen, 2015) 6/10
Eat Your Children (O'Brien/O'Leary, 2015) 6/10

It Follows
Life Partners
Happy Christmas

The Music Room (Ray, 1958)
Tristana (Buñuel, 1970)
Dogtooth (Lanthimos, 2009)
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Almodovar, 1990)
I Shot Jesse James (Fuller, 1949)
Three Cases of Murder (Eady/O'Ferrall/Toye/uncredited Welles)
Master of the House (Dreyer, 1925)

Finally seen Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters. Very good.

The State I am in (Christian Petzhold, 2000)
Ghosts (Christian Petzhold, 2005)
Yella (Christian Petzhold, 2007)

Petzhold's sensibility was there from his first film: a very beautiful way of using of location to talk about things. Really flat looking, usually the country or a beach with something quite corporate or touristy that is never far away. In State.. it could be the abandoned mansion the exiled German commies hide out in, or shopping malls, grubby hotels nearby a dull beach; Ghosts have the cafe, park, street, anodyne spaces of the mansion (where the "party with food and DJ" takes place in); Yella is all corporate: hotel, meeting rooms where the windows have no curtains (to give the trick of transparency where actually suits are competing as to who can steal the most money or hide the most, this was a great trick used in The International, which also begins in Central Europe).

The characters are in harmony with these settings: they are outcasts in the flat, clean landscape (the only time eyeball busting colour comes in is in the nightclub scene in Ghosts, so Petzhold is in control). The terrorists in State.. for one, the woman who needs to get away from the abusive ex- and to a new life, the mother who has lost her daughter in Ghosts but what caught me also in his list of outcasts are the teen girls in Ghosts and the daughter of the couple in State. There was a killer tension in State.. between the daughter who wanted nice clothes and boys and music and diversion, and the scrambling parents who were on a mission to get away to Brazil -- and who have each other and have in any case tasted it all before rejecting all of it as tools of capitalist control. Petzhold knows the arguments pro- and con- all of this are tired (not least because the Berlin Wall has fallen) so they are subtly inserted: one line here or there, no more (he is in control -- that word again, get my drift?)

Also - outcasts are surveilled, all via CCTV - comes up again and again. You see its failure. It isn't CCTV that catches up with the commies in the end but a betrayal, the mother who has her daughter kidnapped has the whole incident caught in CCTV but that isn't good enough to ensure a recovery. Technology is so much waste of wire and lense - if you are an outcast and you want to disappear from view you do so. And the performances are directed as such - the girl in Ghosts and State.. has to be under the radar, nothing too showy. Nina Hoss (who has a beauty that is hard to keep under wraps) wears the same clothes at all times in Yella (explanation given at the end), she plays someone under siege, struggling, but who has to keep a lid on it, to be as boring as her surroundings...all of this is well played and directed.

The music in all of these...no more than two or three pieces. Bach and Tom Ze in Ghosts (what a pairing! and totally justified), goes between not overstaying to abruptly returning to punctuate a scene at the moment needed.

In an interview Petzhold said he didn't start with the intention of making a trilogy and many of these aspects will surely come up again in other films but its all real tight. Great series of films to discover.

This post was not bought to you by K-Punk

Dior and I (Tcheng, 2014)
Wild Tales (Szifron, 2014)
Passing Through (Larry Clark, 1977)

Hey xyzzzz, I tried a Petzhold - Yella - after reading yr recommendations here. I like what you say abt the way he uses the rather flat - in every sense - locations of modern Germany; a drabness both universal and very specific. Some of the scenes shot on the street were especially breathtaking in their orchestration of camera movement, sound, editing, performance. Have you seen the Herk Hervey film Carnival of Souls? Yella is very very close to it in certain (SPOILERY) respects.

I've never seen it. Petzold more than mentions it in the notes (along with The Sixth Sense!) From his POV he feels that stuff like Nosferatu (with its romanticism) and German mythology isn't as accessible to him because of the way German fascism appropriated it so he looks to the US for other models.

btw there is a new film from him soon (reason for the retro). Phoenix is out in a couple of weeks.

Phoenix is very good. That specific thing that all the reviews marvel about is as good as they say it is! I've only seen that and Barbara, but I def need to go back and watch the earlier stuff.

From his POV he feels that stuff like Nosferatu (with its romanticism) and German mythology isn't as accessible to him because of the way German fascism appropriated it so he looks to the US for other models.

Sounds like the same kind of argument that Siegfried Kracauer made in From Caligari to Hitler (the clue is in the title!) Interesting to compare to the Krautrock groups and their complicated relationship with German musical culture.

Also have Petzhold's Barbara on my LoveFilm list.

Kracauer keeps coming up - need to read that.

Just in general, Kracauer is an amazing writer. But there are a bunch of factual mistakes in his book, back in those days a lot of mythology could spring up around a films production, and of course K couldn't easily rewatch all the films. So take the whole thing with a grain of salt. But there's also a new documentary of the same name out, if it interests anyone.

Yeah, the recent Region 2/Masters of Cinema disc of the restored Cabinet of Dr Caligari includes an excellent commentary track by German cinema expert David Kalat that goes into the way that Kracauer's (sometimes erroneous) writing on Caligari shaped the critical discourse around it for a very long time.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/807243459?book_show_action=true&page=1

Interesting review here.

Human Highway (1982, Young, Stockwell) 3/10
Ride in the Whirlwind (1966, Hellman) 5/10
*The Shooting (1966, Hellman) 7/10
La Pointe-Courte (1955, Varda) 8/10
Edvard Munch (1974, Watkins) 10/10
The Bachelor Party (1957, D Mann) 6/10
*Vive l’Amour (1994, Tsai) 8/10
Rio 100 Degrees (1955, Pereira dos Santos) 8/10
The Most Dangerous Game (1932, Pichel, Schoedsack) 7/10
Jauja (2014, Alonso) 6/10
La Sapienza (2014, Green) 6/10
Immoral Tales (1974, Borowczyk) 4/10
Cop (1988, Harris) 7/10
*Things to Come (1936, Menzies) 7/10
Life of Riley (2014, Resnais) 5/10
Dr. Jekyll and His Women (1981, Borowczyk) 6/10
Some Call It Loving (1973, Harris) 6/10
America (1924, Griffith) 7/10
The Loveless (1981, Bigelow, Montgomery) 5/10
Men in Orbit (1979, Lurie) 4/10
From Mayerling to Sarajevo (1940, Ophuls) 7/10
Gone Girl (2014, Fincher) 5/10

Shame the last Resnais was no good..

Edvard Munch (1974, Watkins) 10/10

An ex-girlfriend (who was a painter) mentioned to me before about an excellent Munch biopic (unless there's another) that she was interested in seeing but I dismissed it because ugh, biopics.

That's wrong, esp if you've seen any other Watkins.

haha it is among the most nonbiopics of all time

xpost Yeah, I'm just skeptical of biopics of tortured artistes tbh

Ah, Watkins directed Culloden, which I've always been meaning to see.

Vertigo

Damn this movie was amazing. Feel like David Lynch is heavily heavily influenced by this movie. The doubles felt very Mulholland Drive. So many twists and turns, such a weird tortured cast of characters, and jawdropping still-stylish effects sequences. There was one scene where the room was blue and there was a purple neon light at the window and it looked amazing like something out of Fire Walk With Me. Hitchcock respects his audience and leaves little alleyways and fakeouts all throughout. His movies are self-aware but still searching. The scene where Scottie knocks on a lifesize wooden horse to prove it isn't real. Is he really the crazy one? He is kind of the villain of this movie. That ending came out of nowhere and really flipped the whole film on its head!

Lynch has introduced screenings of the film, yes

actually it was a green light in the hotel room, gen the "ghost" color

Festival haul:

Hill of Freedom (Hong Sang-soo, 2014)
Greenery Will Bloom Again (Ermanno Olmi, 2014)
Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (Spike Lee, 2014)
Sworn Virgin (Laura Bispuri, 2015)
Princess of France (Matías Piñeiro, 2014)
From What Is Before (Lav Diaz, 2014)*
Portrait of the Artist (Antoine Barraud, 2014)
Over Your Dead Body (Takashi Miike, 2014)
Parabellum (Lukas Valenta Rinner, 2015)
Norway (Yannis Veslemes, 2014)
Bridgend (Jeppe Rønde, 2015)
White God (Kornél Mondruczó, 2014)
Limbo (Anne Sofie Hartmann, 2014)
Goodbye to Language (Jean Luc Godard, 2014)*
A Little Chaos (Alan Rickman, 2014)
The Wonders (Alice Rohrwacher, 2014)
Underdog (Ronnie Sandahl, 2014)*
Until I Lose My Breath (Emine Emel Balci, 2015)
The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, 2014)
Listen Up Philip (Alex Ross Perry, 2014)
Gentle (Le-Van Kiet, 2014)
Flapping In the Middle of Knowhere (Diep Hoang Nguyen, 2014)
The Inseminator (Kim Quy Bui, 2014)
Queen of Earth (Alex Ross Perry, 2015)
Portrait of the Artist (Antoine Barraud, 2014)*
The Fire (Juan Schnitman, 2015)
The Tree (Sonja Prosenc, 2014)
Dog Lady (Laura Citarella & Verónica Llinás, 2015)
Amour Fou (Jessica Haussner, 2014)*
Eisenstein in Guanajuato (Peter Greenaway, 2015)
Limbo (Anna Sofie Hartmann, 2014)*
600 Miles (Gabriel Ripstein, 2015)
The Pornographer (Bertrand Bonello, 2001)
Métamorphoses (Christophe Honoré, 2014)
Eliten (Thomas Daneskov, 2015)
Der Var Engang En Krig (Palle Kjærulff-Schmidt, 1966)
Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014)*
The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin, 2014)

Matter Of Life And Death and Colonel Blimp. Both good but I liked the former film way way more, really impressive.

Just saw the trailer for Tale Of Tales and I don't think I've been this impressed by a trailer in several years. Has anyone here seen the film?

Matter of Life and Death and Colonel Blimp both A+++

Watched Now You See It last night, and wish I hadn't. A movie about magicians performing heists would seem to be basically direct-marketed to me, but this was a total shitshow. I should have taken the presence of Jesse Eisenberg (America's most punchable actor—yes, ahead of Michael Cera and Shia LaBoeuf) as the warning it was clearly intended to be. Oh, well.

Matter Of Life And Death and Colonel Blimp. Both good but I liked the former film way way more, really impressive.

Its good on BFI to be putting the odd re-screen of this on. Watched it at a weather-wise depressing Sunday a couple of years ago an it was perfect.

itv4 also had a run of repeating this and they should re-do it. Beats Rambo #poptimistsnotallowed

Also amazes me there used to be british films like that.

P/P did make films that present a realism of their time. i) that is totally alien to us Britishes now and, ii) in film terms they feel like they are from another galaxy, given what else gets made here.

why do you want to punch actors tough guy

My biggest problem with Now You See Me is that the twist ending made the movie worse and required a ton of setup.

It turns out that the magicians aren't modern Robin Hoods, it's all about Frank Grimes Jr getting revenge.("spoilers" i suppose)

Morbius, what did you think of Gone Girl? I've yet to see it, but read a variety of takes, incl the explosive denunciation by Mary Gaitskill (for once, loosing/dropping her cool).

a quick dump of the last couple months. *s are previously seen

Porco Rosso (Miyazaki)
Song of the Sea (Moore)
*Scanners (Cronenberg)
The Dead Zone (Cronenberg)
*Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma)
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (Oshima)
Make Mine Mink (Asher)
God Told Me To (Cohen)
*The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Richter)
*Cat Soup (Sato)
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (Burton)
The Horse Raised by Spheres (O'Reilly)
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Amirpour)
Frogs (McCowan)
*The Telephone Book (Lyon)
Friday the 13th (Cunningham)
Friday the 13th Part 2 (Miner)
Friday the 13th Part 3 (Miner)
Please Say Something (O'Reilly)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Zito)
The External World (O'Reilly)
A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Fulci)
The Captive (Laloux)
*The ABCs of Death (various)- shit sandwich, no better on a second viewing
Gandahar (Laloux)
Black Belly of the Tarantula (Cavara)
Pierrot le Fou (Godard)

Forgot, the first Friday the 13th was a rewatch. And technically I'd seen Pee-Wee, but as a very small child on VHS, so that hardly counts...

I don't know if this is commonly commented on but I noticed in A Matter Of Life And Death that among the statues of great historical people was Mohammed, but you only see the base of the statue.

Listen Up Phillip (Alex Ross Perry, 2014)
Nostalgia For The Light (Patricio Guzmán, 2011)
Happy People: A Year In The Taiga (Werner Herzog, 2013)

I watched these 3 throughout today with a huge hangover and was very happy. Had very low expectations for Listen Up Phillip but ended up loving it.

Close-Up (6.5)
While We’re Young (7.5)
Simone (5.0)
Wanda (7.0)
Night Moves (Kelly Reichardt--7.5)
The Last Detail (7.5)
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (7.0)
The Cult of J.T. Leroy (6.5)
Best of Enemies (8.5)
Deep Web (7.0)

Ex Machina - worth the ticket

I hoped that film would do well but it seems to have flopped.

It was #5 in per screen average

Aliens (1986)

I need to see the original soon, but this was a lot of fun. It's a James Cameron film so you know there will be cheesy rhyming 80s military banter and a sleazy greedy contractor who will sell out anyone on his one-way ticket to hell. It is crazy how much this movie influenced video games. I liked Bill Paxton losing his shit ("Game over man game over!") and Ripley telling him to man up because this little girl survived for a long time with no weapons on her own and she is infinitely more of a badass than this dramatic space marine. A little blunt with the parental/monsters-under-the-bed motifs but it is cool that Ripley somehow managed to find the one other person in the universe that survived these things and together they get through this mess. It kind of sucks that the only solution is to NUKE THE PLANET.

The Sin Of Harold Diddlebock ( 8/10 : i somehow overlooked this Sturges but wow what a surprise. Loved this.)
The Lady From Shanghai (9/10 : $9 Blu-Ray. A fantastic restoration. Beautiful and head spinning and fun as always.)

Human Highway (1982): I'm biased by Devo love and a chance to see Neil Young play with his model trains so of course I liked it. Really dug the elegiac hippie scene that interrupts the professional outsider art. Have a feeling that this movie is somehow responsible for Talking Heads' True Stories.

Big Eyes (2014): Hey, I wonder if that Feral House book on the Keanes is in the iTunes store? Oh cool, it is!

Starred Up (Mackenzie, 2013) 7/10
The Killers (Siodmak, 1946) 7/10
Ben-Hur (Wyler, 1959) 6/10
Viridiana (Bunuel, 1961) 8/10
*What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (Aldrich, 1962) 8/10
Beyond the Black Rainbow (Cosmatos, 2010) 5/10
Key Largo (Huston, 1948)
Birdman (Inarritu, 2014) 3/10
Love is Strange (Sachs, 2014) 7/10
Lilting (Khaou, 2014) 5/10
The Bridge on the River Kwai (Lean, 1957) 6/10
Fury (Lang, 1936) 4/10
Force Majeure (Ostlund, 2014)

oops....

Key Largo (Huston, 1948) 8/10

and oops again...

Force Majeure (Ostlund, 2014) 7/10

saw Selma & Inherent Vice on a flight, loved them both for very different reasons
Outcast of the Islands (1951 joseph conrad adaptation, very watchable, colonialism on full display, for a sense of what an amazing contrast / double feature this would make with 'Burn!' check out the 1952 nyt review - http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B05E6D7133BE23BBC4E52DFB3668389649EDE )
The Music Room (yep, beautiful)

2 DVD set of Watkin's Edvard Munch just arrived, that's next

While We're Young (Baumbach, 2014) 5/10
Force Majeure (Ostlund, 2014) 7/10
Dr Jekyll et les Femmes (Borowczyk, 1980) 8/10
Jauja (Alonso, 2014) 8/10
The Falling (Morley, 2014) 5/10

The Professionals (Brooks, 1966) 7/10
Fox and his Friends (Fassbinder, 1975) 8/10
Forty Guns (Fuller, 1957) 6/10
Hands of the Ripper (Sasdy, 1971) 6/10
Secret Agent (Hitchcock, 1936) 7/10
The Young One (Bunuel, 1960) 6/10
Aparajito (Ray, 1957) 7/10
Frozen River (Hunt, 2008) 6/10
Yella (Petzold, 2007) 7/10
Jour De Fete (Tati, 1949 - colour version) 6/10
The World of Apu (Ray, 1959) 9/10
The King of Escape (Guiraudie, 2009) 6/10
The Man From Laramie (Mann, 1955) 8/10
Saboteur (Hitchcock, 1942) 7/10