Last (x) movies you saw

I was surprised to find that I kinda like Tommy Lee Jones as a director. His films feel like whole stories, which goes to unexpected places, and has moral implications. Good genre stuff. And he is pretty great in The Homesman, I love that he starts crying just a few minutes after he's introduced, and pretty much stays a confused loser throughout the film. But I prefer Three Burials, it has more to it, more characters, more structural trickery. Also, I'm wondering if perhaps the western is the genre hit hardest by the shift to digital. It just looks wrong somehow, the slight metallic sheen to the colors doesn't fit the landscapes that well.

Cool, no arguments on Homesman, which I loved. Haven't seen Three Burials yet.

Love and Mercy (Pohlad, 2014) 5/10
Eden (Hansen-Love, 2014) 6/10

The Last Wagon (Daves, 1956) 7/10
Day of the Outlaw (De Toth, 1959) 8/10
Winter Light (Bergman, 1963) 8/10
Park Row (Fuller, 1952) 6/10
I Was Born, But... (Ozu, 1932) 9/10
Full Moon in Paris (Rohmer, 1984) 7/10
Ivan the Terrible Part 1 (Eisenstein, 1945) 7/10
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Reeves, 2014) 5/10
Ivan the Terrible Part 2: The Boyars' Plot (Eisenstein 1946:1958) 6/10
The Human Centipede: First Sequence (Six, 2009) 7/10
The Floorwalker (Chaplin, 1916) 6/10
Diary of a Chambermaid (Bunuel, 1964) 9/10
The Other One: the Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir (Fleiss, 2014) 5/10
Jamaica Inn (Hitchcock, 1939) 7/10
Ivan's Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1962) 7/10
Hatari! (Hawks, 1962) 7/10 (pre-Cecil the Lion viewing/score)
The Big Sky (Hawks, 1952) 6/10
Mr and Mrs Smith (Hitchcock, 1941) 5/10
Zombie Holocaust (Girolami, 1980) 6/10

I watched a bunch of Netflix junk this month. *=seen previously

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau 6/10 great ending
Jodorowski's Dune (2013) 7/10
Atari: Game Over (2014) 3/10 liked the interview with the e.t. programmer. could do without ernest cline.
An Honest Liar (2014) 3/10

Beverly Hills Cop (1984) 5/10 noticed lots of scenes based on schoolyard terms for anal sex/rape -- banana in the tailpipe, sneaking in the back door, going against traffic.
Top Gun (1986) 2/10 a movie with no good scenes. good music tho.
Red Heat (1988) 3/10
*Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) 7/10 lots of reused jokes (many of which were stale to begin with). strange that richard lewis didn't have a bigger film career because he's great here. dave chapelle with nothing to work with.
*12 Monkeys (1995) 8/10 too many dutch angles. about as good a hollywood movie they could make out of la jetee.
Haywire (2011) 4/10 generic plot and bland direction, that's soderbergh
Chronicle (2012) 6/10
Oblivion (2013) 4/10 visually great
Man of Steel (2013) 3/10

cinema outings
Inside Out (2015) [2D] 8/10
Ant-Man (2015) [3D] 5/10 so many failed jokes

yea i couldnt even get thru the atari doc

Richard Lewis gave an inexplicably poignant performance in Amy Heckerling's inexplicably good Vamps from a few years ago.

yes!

any top gun scene w/ half-naked val kilmer is good enough for me

Keeper of the Flame (Cukor, 1943)
Kanal (Wajda, 1956)
Don't Look Now (Roeg, 1973)
The Castle of Sand (Nomura, 1974)
Spend It All (Blank, 1971)
Dry Wood (Blank, 1973)
Yum Yum Yum (Blank, 1990)
Hot Pepper (Blank, 1973)
The Narrow Margin (Fleischer, 1952)
While the City Sleeps (Lang, 1956)

Stavisky... (1974, Resnais) 6/10
*The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974, Sargent) 8/10
It Follows (2014, Mitchell) 6/10
Horse Money (2014, Costa) 8/10
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986, McNaughton) 6/10
Court (2014, Tamhane) 8/10
Night Falls (1952, Gavaldon) 7/10
Upstream (1927, Ford) 7/10
In the Palm of Your Hand (1951, Gavaldon) 8/10
The Black Swan (1942, King) 7/10

Dolores Claiborne (Hackford, 1995) 5/10
* My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946) 9/10
The Circle (Haupt, 2014) 5/10
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Spielberg, 1989) 7/10
Jerichow (Petzold, 2008) 6/10
* A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Andersson, 6/10)
Irrational Man (Allen, 2015) 4/10
Georgia (Grosbard, 1995) 6/10
* Housekeeping (Forsyth, 1987) 8/10
Phoenix (Petzold, 2015) 6/10

Girlhood (Sciamma, 2015) 7/10
Blind Shaft (Li Yang, 2003) 7/10
Lidice (Nikolaev, 2011) 4/10
The Taking Of Power By Louis XIV (Rosselini, 66) 9/10
Germany, Year Zero (Rosselini, 1949) 10/10
Killer Of Sheep (Burnett, 1978) 10/10
Faults (Stearns, 2015) 6/10
We Are Still Here (Geoghegan, 2015) 5/10
Viridiana (Bunuel, 1961) 10/10
Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959) 8/10

I can't help thinking Rosselini had some influence on Burnett for KOS or maybe it's the similar naturalistic scenes of kids playing in the rubble of Berlin/Watts or just because I watched one after the other, both are beautiful movies.

Criss Cross (Siodmak, 1948)
Angel Face (Preminger, 1952)
The Young Savages (Frankenheimer, 1961)
Cries and Whispers (Bergman, 1972)
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (McQuarrie, 2015)
Ministry of Fear (Lang, 1944)
Suddenly (Allen, 1954)
The Big Heat (Lang, 1953)
Conflict (Bernhardt, 1945)

7 more noirs on the DVR -- will I watch 'em all?

I can't help thinking Rosselini had some influence on Burnett for KOS or maybe it's the similar naturalistic scenes of kids playing in the rubble of Berlin/Watts or just because I watched one after the other,

No, you're actually on to something. Burnett's a big Neorealism buff. He even wrote an essay for the Criterion Bicycle Thieves (found here). He doesn't mention Rosselini there, but there probably is a connection as you observed.

Legal Eagles (6.0)
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (7.5)
Me, Earl and the Dying Girl (5.5)
In the Heat of the Night (7.5)
A LEGO Brickumentary (5.5)
Best of Enemies (8.5)
J. Edgar (4.0)
Birthday Girl (6.0)
Chaos Theory (5.0)
The Overnight (6.0)

i'm about thirty deep on the noir collection and another 90 to go; my girl is starting to tell me we have to stop

I deleted 3 last night unwatched -- there's no way I'd last through 90 more. The other day I found myself wanting to watch a movie in Japanese or German or anything other than clipped American English.

lol, yeah; i sneaked in guardians of the galaxy and appropriate behavior just to keep my brain intact
it's like you start the film and go, welp ALL these people are fucked

Salt of the Earth (Wim Wenders, 2014) er idk this doesn't really tackle the problem with Salgado's later work. Not interested in watching a friendship evolve between two artist type ppl.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marielle Heller, 2015) - friend said we should see something fun but idk tbh all I could think of is how this pulled back from the brink - she should have turned into a heroin addict to get over the relationship with her stepdad (bcz that's what ppl do in films) with a last shot of the mother playing the tapes at the daughter's deathbed. Then again that might be tossed off Fassbinder instead of a few riffs from Ghost World.
The Gold of Naples (de Sica, 1954) - six stories around Naples. Neorealism but really funny, pulling back from the melodrama while saving that for the normal rhythm of a typical noisy Italian street. One of the stories is barely more than just this sketch - a child's funeral procession (and the slightly bizarre ritual in it) which was totally bizarre sorta proto-slow cinema thing to put in. Hope to catch some more soon.
La Grande Bouffe (Ferreri, 1973) - pretty much a misfire with watchable leads and acting. Pasolini surely saw this one -- a tale of white rich ppl locking themselves in a house and eating till they destroyed themselves. Sound Familiar? Just put some emphasis on what comes out as much as what goes in. And of yeah torture of young boys and girls (Ferreri also hints at that with the prostitutes, except they could leave..)

*The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982, Taviani, Taviani) 8/10
*Cold Turkey (1971, Lear) 7/10
Starlet (2012, Baker) 5/10
Berlin Express (1948, Tourneur) 6/10
*Petulia (1968, Lester) 7/10
Magic Mike XXL (2015, Jacobs) 8/10
The Return of the Musketeers (1989, Lester) 7/10
The Bed-Sitting Room (1969, Lester) 8/10
*Caravaggio (1986, Jarman) 7/10
*The Mirror (1974, Tarkovsky) 10/10
*Coogan’s Bluff (1968, Siegel) 7/10
Counting (2015, Cohen) 7/10
The Mack (1973, Campus) 5/10

When you abbreviate ("I watched TTT...") is it because you assume everyone will know what you're talking about or because you're clueless and it never entered your mind that the point of making a post and communicating with others is to be understood. If you convey your message in a way that's not understood, then what's the point of making a post at all? You just enjoy touching the little letter keys on your computer?

Dredd (Travis, 2012) 7/10
Everything Must Go (Rush, 2010) 5/10
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Audiard, 2005) 8/10
King and Country (Losey, 1964) 8/10
La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960) 10/10

rewatches:
Wild at Heart (Lynch, 1991) - 7/10
Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997) - 7/10
The Fog (Carpenter, 1979) - 6/10
Midnight Run (Brest, 1988) - 8/10
Live and Let Die (Hamilton, 1971) - 8/10
Biggles (Hough, 1986) - 4/10
Batman Begins (Nolan, 2005) - 6/10
Interstellar (Nolan, 2014) - 6/10

1st time:
Trainwreck (Apatow, 2015) - 6/10
Foxcatcher (Miller, 2014) - 5/10
A Most Violent Year (Chandor, 2014) - 7/10
The Tale of Princess Kagua (Takahata, 2014) - 5/10
Jupiter Ascending (Wachowskis, 2014) - 7/10
Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellmen,1971) - 7/10
Vanishing Point (Sarafian, 1971) - 7/10
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr Moreau (Gregory, 2015) - 8/10

A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) - Super old fashioned but classy sexy times on a boat w Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando. Chaplin looking backwards in Swinging 60s Hollywood.

Beastmaster (1982) - Classic 80s Swords & Sorcery. GOT is built on this stuff. The weird witches were cool and kind of scrazy/strange-looking with kind of schlocky makeup that was hidden beneath the darkness of the film and kind of lo-fi look. Leads Marc Singer and Tanya Roberts are b-movie legends. Rad origin story. He has spy ferrets.

Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time (1991) - I mostly remember this for the crazy tonal twist, the first one being almost a horror movie at times w the tall dudes that are like venus fly traps for humans. It is cool that the twist doesn't happen for a while, so you still get sucked into this fantasy world they are building, before you see the fish-out-of-water stuff in LA. The streetwise valley girl character is awesome, and really kind of a crazy a wreckless person. She is introduced outrunning cops who she doesn't realize are trying to pull her over for speeding bc she is on the phone. *SPOILERS* So around the halfway point of the movie we are treated to two really great effects shots, a cop car and a tiger, separately, flying in slow motion through a time portal into this fantasy realm. I guess the series jumped the shark here because there is a 3rd Beastmaster movie and it has the production look of a Power Rangers episode, big rubber monsters and all. Maybe some other time.

Everything Will Be OK (2006) - This was really kind of depressing to watch. It was beautiful and technically amazing and inspiring, but a bit existential for my tastes at the moment. Not the kind of movie you just want to put on at random.

Reflections In A Golden Eye (Huston, 1967) 6/10
Ex Machina (Garland, 2015) 7/10
Y Tu Mama Tambien (Cuaron, 2001) 8/10
*World Of Tomorrow (Hertzfeldt, 2015) 9/10
The Testament Of Dr Mabuse (Lang, 1933) 6/10
Stray Dog (Kurosawa, 1949) 7/10

what's da problem w/ Mabuse?

Xyz otm re la grande bouffe, it commits to its one note but isn't great, enjoyable enough tho

what's da problem w/ Mabuse?

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Sunday, August 23, 2015 1:00 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I dig that it's a brave allegory of Nazism but as a film I didn't get much satisfaction from it. Some neat visual effects but too long-winded and painfully slow for a suspense thriller.

Carnal Knowledge (8.0)
Straight Outta Compton (7.5)
The Pelican Brief (6.5)
In the Line of Fire (7.5)
Donnie Brasco (7.0)
The Possession of Joel Delaney (6.0)
Maps to the Stars (6.5)
21 (5.5)
Notorious (8.0)
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (6.5)

The Jobs documentary was interesting by default, but it's a real jumble--the exposé feels halfhearted, and the chronology is all over the place.

Suzaku (Kawase, 97)
Shara (Kawase, 03)
The Mourning Forest (Kawase, 07)
Hanezu (Kawase, 11)
Babel (Inarritu, 06)
Cyrano de Bergerac (Rappeneau, 90)
Nikita (Besson, 90)
Léon (Besson, 94)
The Wonders (Rohrwacher, 14)*
Latcho Drom (Gatlif, 93)
Geronimo (Gatlif, 14)
Rodrigo D: No Futuro (Gaviria, 90)
A Royal Affair (Arcel, 12)
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans (Herzog, 09)
The Piano (Campion, 93)
Holy Smoke (Campion, 99)
In the Cut (Campion, 03)
Brothers Grimm (Gilliam, 05)
The Search (Hazanavicius, 14)
Passion (de Palma, 12)
Malena (Tornatore, 00)
Taxi (Panahi, 15)
Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words (Björkman, 15)
Juno (Reitman, 07)*
Like Father, Like Son (Kore-eda, 14)*

Have enjoyed watching a bunch of Kawase and Campiion, and Taxi is obviously pretty much a masterpiece. Other than that, and some ok ones, I've watched some bad movies, huh?

I just watched The Final Program. It's based on a Michael Moorcock Jerry Cornelius novel.
Pretty trashy, made in the early 70s. Somewhat stylish and fab, but overall not a great movie.
Now need to read the source novel and see what they changed.
I've read a few of his from around the time but I don't think that one.

Straight Outta Compton (Gray, 2015) 6/10
Last Days of Vietnam (Kennedy, 2014) 6/10
Tom at the Farm (Dolan, 2008) 6/10
The High and the Mighty (Wellman, 1954) 2/10
* Sunrise (Murnau 1928) 10/10
* Simon of the Desert (Buñuel, 1966) 8/10

Tom at the Farm isn't quite that old, or good.

A 6 means watchable.

A 6 for Tom at the Farm is not unreasonable. I'd rate it a 5.

And, wow, The High and the Mighty is that bad?!

nope

Yes. Interminable. Each character gets his or her back story, complete with Oscar-worthy crisis.

The Legend of Barney Thomson (Carlyle, 2015) 5/10
Mistress America (Baumbach, 2015) 7/10
The Dance of Reality (Jodorowsky, 2013) 7/10
Straight Outta Compton (Gray, 2015) 5/10

Grey Gardens (Maysles/Hovde/Meyer, 1975) 7/10
Listen Up Philip (Perry, 2014) 7/10
The Past (Farhadi, 2013) 7/10
Bon Voyage (Hitchcock, 1944) 5/10
Aventure Malgache (Hitchcock, 1944) 4/10
Broken Arrow (Daves, 1950) 7/10
Kingsman The Secret Service (Vaughan, 2015) 4/10
Paisa (Rosellini, 1946) 7/10
Simon of the Desert (Bunuel, 1965) 8/10
The Secret in the Their Eyes (Campanella, 2009) 6/10
Pauline at the Beach (Rohmer, 1982) 8/10
The Far Country (Man,, 1954) 7/10
Wild Tales (Szifron, 2014) 6/10
Night Moves (Reichardt, 2013) 6/10
Story of My Death (Serra, 2013) 9/10
Ex Machina (Garland, 2015) 5/10
My Girlfriend's Boyfriend (Rohmer, 1987) 7/10
A Bullet for the General (Damiani, 1966) 8/10
The Letter (Wyler, 1940) 8/10
Enemy (Villeneuve, 2014) 5/10

Good to see a good grade to Story of My Death. I need to rewatch that somehow.

There was a Serra season at the Tate earlier this year I was unable to attend :-(

The President (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 2014)
The Best of Enemies (Neville/Gordon, 2014)
The Wolfpack (Moselle, 2014)
The Look of Silence (Oppenheimer, 2014)

The Look of Silence was better than the Act of Killing (yes I had a problem with the 'quirky' recreations). 'Anonymous' still chills the spine. The quirk doesn't stop in The Wolfpack but there are a few things buried within the comfortably 'fake' doc (film as a life-saver, how people at a certain time hated work so much they'd do anything to get out of it, the hell that is love and being unable to quit and scram). Makhmalbaf is asking questions -- however uneven the process -- in a post-Libya way. What if you overthrow the dictator and you open the way for something worse? Like his A Moment of Innocence he knows the way to an ending you remember.

Saw Story of My Death on this DVD from Second Run

http://www.secondrundvd.com/release_story.php

Oh great txjust didn't think to check

My movie-watching seriously curbed this month thanks to being busy with a move and my electronics being inaccessible for a good chunk of it.

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (Wrathall, 2013) 7/10
Don Jon (Gordon-Levitt, 2013) 6/10
The Way, Way Back (Faxon and Rash, 2013) 8/10
Get on the Bus (Lee, 1996) 7/10

foxfire: confessions of a girl gang (cantet 2012) 6/10
Rachel, Rachel (newman '68) 8/10
the guest (wingard 2014) 4/10
mistress America (baumbach 2015) 9/10
queen of earth (alex ross perry 2015) 5/10
suburbia (linklater '96) 5/10
the prince and the showgirl (Olivier '57) 6/10
a streetcar named desire (Kazan '51) 5/10
the end of the tour (pondsoldt '15) 5/10
obvious child (Robespierre '14) 8/10
tom at the farm (dolan '13) 6/10
Niagara (Hathaway '53) 4/10
tangerine (sean baker '15) 7/10
lone survivor (berg '13) 4/10
mortal thoughts (Rudolph '91) 4/10

u crazee on Mortal Thoughts, not to mention Streetcar

johnny, you must explain yourself re: Streetcar!

brandos great, meh to the rest. melodrama sometimes/often just doesn't read to me *shrug*

haven't seen Mortal Thoughts in years but thought it was a reasonably well done melodrama with a good Willis perf. Closer to a 6, I think, but it doesn't matter

willis is so arch, goatee and all. hes not bad. only other touch of life is john pankow. Keitel is sleepwalking, demi is ok, otherwise its just kinda rote idk didn't enjoy it

can't be reducing St'car to 'melodrama'

i mean, it was part of a radical new avenue in American theatre