Last (x) movies you saw

Hmm I loved it but yeah it's def album with accompanying images, sometimes the images add to the experience & sometimes not but I never really felt they detracted from it; loved seeing the dog & Anderson's video diaries are obv gonna be of interest aside from any formal qualities. Xga otm that the song is somehow much better in this context

Xp that is a great post on itrots

never abbreviating that film's title again

Maggie's Plan (Miller, 2016) 5/10 - Rich New York academics complaining in brownstones. I like Greta Gerwig but she's not showing very much range.

I like Gerwig as much as any comic actress of her (our) generation, but this really looked cringe-inducing from the trailer.

I agree, she's frequently great, but she's gotta get out of New York.

The plot of Maggie's Plan is pretty much what happened between her and Noah Baumbach.

1001 nights (amano yoshitaka) - animated short by the artist for the final fantasy series, really stunning animation but the score seemed to ape "daphnis et chloe" a bit too closely

were you cleaning one of their houses, flappy?

well Eames chairs don't dust themselves

Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance (1974, Toshiya Fujita) 7/10 - Not all that much vengeance, really, and Lady Snowblood is fairly superfluous to the plot, but it looks great.

Creepy (2016, Kyoshi Kurosawa) 5/10 - Starts promising, becomes kind of unpleasant and nonsensical in its last half. I haven't seen Cure, but my girlfriend said that it basically reused a lot of the elements of Cure in a much less satisfying manner. Lots of pissed-off festival-goers on our way out.

horns (aja, 2013) 4/10
margaret (lonergan, 2011) 8/10
*watchmen (snyder, 2009) 8/10
clouds of sils maria (assayas, 2014) 7/10
breathless (mcbride, 1983) 7/10
mary and max (elliot, 2009) 7/10
exotica (egoyan, 1994) 8/10

documentaries

red army (polsky, 2014) 6/10
heroin cape cod usa (okazaki, 2015) 6/10
evocateur: the morton downey jr. movie (kramer/miller, 2013) 7/10
the decline of western civilisation: the metal years (spherris, 1988)

the metal years 8/10

dow - yes the music to Heart of a Dog was p/gd.

How did you like Belladonna of Sadness?
Absolutely loved it. It gets a lot of mileage about the combination of limited animation (mostly still frames, really), with a lot of weird pattern/decorative stuff that plays with the 2D film frame in a way that reminds me of Klimt and Schiele. Sounds pretentious as shit, I know, but I think there's something there.

Just be aware that if you see it, the devil is shaped like an evil penis and people will giggle.

― You guys are caterpillar (Telephone thing), Sunday, May 29, 2016 11:47 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea i saw this too, wow
i am real far from an anime or even animation guy but this was a work of art
aren't there some deep soundtrack heads around here? id rec seeking this out by any means nec'y; the skronky jazz/noize sections were amazing

I liked Sing Street. (Thought there might be a John Carney thread, but no.) A couple of sappy parts, maybe some overreach (the economy, divorce, brothers, priests), but some of the original music is period-perfect, as is the band's first video, and the girl's as fetching as Clare Grogan in Comfort and Joy. I don't think it matters whether you loved or hated this stuff at the time, this is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8VtbULzJTU

*Woman Is the Future of Man (2004, Hong) 6/10
The Passionate Thief (1960, Monicelli) 7/10
*It (1927, Badger) 7/10
Dust in the Wind (1987, Hou) 7/10
The Moon’s Our Home (1936, Seiter) 6/10
Under the Cherry Moon (1986, Prince) 4/10
Broadway (1929, Fejos) 6/10
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950, Douglas) 6/10
There’s Always Tomorrow (1934, Sloman) 6/10
Only Yesterday (1933, Stahl)

Only Yesterday (1933, Stahl) 7/10

Margaret Sullavan's film debut... She's great, and Billie Burke warbles a few bars of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." Also, it opens with an upscale Manhattan party on the day of the '29 crash, and Franklin Pangborn shows up with a young male date.

a real swingin' party down the line

The Measure of Man (Stéphane Brizé, 2015) - my one French social realist flick for the year. Maybe I should stop that.
Tale of Tales (Matteo Garrone, 2015) - bollocks.
Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015) - this was diverting enough and I felt like reading the travel journals this was based on. In another life.

LOL I think we have seen the same last three films - enjoyed all of them more than you, by the sounds of things, tho' none are w/out their problems major or minor. I saw Measure of a Man after the other two, so was prob in the right frame of a mind for a dose of cleansing Dardennes-esque social realism (w/, it has to be said, a pretty masterful lead performance) - thought everything from the human resources big meeting onward edged into melodrama, or at least something rather too obviously structured/plotted, but worth seeing just for that long mobile home sale scene - also liked the way that Brizé entered and exited scenes from slightly odd lines of approach.

what the hell did you expect from tale of tales, xyzzzz? :D

yeah deffo more movies like The Measure of Man required, I thought Embrace of The Serpent was ok until the cliched death cult showed up.

Just saw Tale Of Tales tonight. Obviously I loved it. Love Shirley Henderson. Tightrope scene was so great.

I'm watching Embrace of The Serpent tonight, liked The Measure of a Man very much; it grew in the mind.

Ward - a jaded viewing but looking at your post you are totally right re: Measure of Man. The long-ish scenes where dialogue is stretched beyond a point of no return: the first meeting with the woman who tries to convince the man to sell his home (v well contrasted with the 2nd wheres she gives him that loan after he gets a job). The Skype interview was horrifying but works on you.

aren't there some deep soundtrack heads around here? id rec seeking this out by any means nec'y; the skronky jazz/noize sections were amazing

It's out on vinyl from Finders Keepers! It's gorgeous, too, I just can't be importing records right now :/

Just a few this time:
Dogtooth (Lanthimos, 2009) Really disturbed by this, more than I was expecting. Not just the content, too; the framing of important characters at the edge of frames or off screen entirely just put me on edge. Thoroughly unpleasant, highly recommended if you're an idiot like me who hasn't seen this yet.
Valley of the Dolls (Robson, 1967) Watched this basically as homework for a podcast discussion (comic artists/critics Katie Skelly and Sarah Horrocks's Trash Twins, a round table on this, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Kyoko Okazaki's manga Helter Skelter). Enjoyable, though the total lack of any counterculture presence in the movie was deeply weird- all the pop culture and SHOWBIZ! in the movie is the squarest, boringest warmed-over 1950s shit you can imagine. Too much distance between high points (roughly in order: "SPARKLE, Neely, SPARKLE"; "Boobies, boobies, boobies!"; The Snatching of the Wig)
The Neon Demon (Refn, 2016) WHAT THE FUCK. I greatly enjoyed this; wasn't quite the camp masterpiece I was hoping for but it is definitely funnier than you'd expect. It also takes a hard, hard swerve from suggestion and vaguely Zardoz-y trippiness into full-on Drive/Only God Forgives/giallo-esque nastiness, so be prepared for that. The friend I saw it with almost puked.

embrace of the serpent - 7.5/10
one floor below - 6/10
aferim - 8.8/10
fire at sea - 5.5/10
the cockettes - 7/10
little dieter needs to fly - 8/10
wings of hope - 8/10
three exercises of interpretation - 6.5/10

Also, THE EXQUISITE CORPUS. 9/10

watched North by Northwest with the kids last night. they dug it. the DVD we watched looked amazing. man, those colors. those red caps. those taxis. eva's hair on the train. so shiny. very mesmerizing.

oh, 9/10

did they like the closing train-in-tunnel joke?

yeah, i don't think they really caught that.

definitely a movie that is even better than you remember if you haven't seen it in years.

North by Northwest was my fave Hitch when I was a kid (maybe still is), so its kid-appeal makes perfect sense to me. There's a wit and a precision to it that make it enjoyable for kids to follow even when they don't totally understand what's going on, and Grant seems to be playing it as at least 3/4 comedy. Also, "You're no fake, you're a genuine idiot" made/makes me LOL at any age.

just entertaining fluff though, no?

so many great images. you could blow up stills from that movie and hang them in a gallery.

"just"

Also, "You're no fake, you're a genuine idiot" made/makes me LOL at any age.

one of the better representations of screen embarrassment, and I love how the scene's irony depends on thinking Cary Grant would know exactly how to conduct himself in such settings.

this never fails to make my jaw drop:

https://freaksreviews.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/large_north_by_northwest_blu-ray2.jpg

NO, StillAdvance, you're thinking of the James Bond films that ripped it off for 50 years.

here: http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/north-by-northwest

i had a lot of fun watching it (i went to an OAP screening so was surrounded by 100s of excited pensioners). but i was struck that if that film were made today, it would prob... well i dont need to finish that sentence. but idk, when i think of hitchcock's greatest, i dont really think of northwest. but maybe im selling it short. its a great example of what hollywood does/did brilliantly. pure, frothy entertainment.

actually one of the weird things i noticed while watching it was how his 'gentlemanly innocence' is celebrated, or seen as a virtue. today, that would be a source of endless mockery.

Pretty strong froth tho, and best-remembered bits mock "strong" too, like Cary Grant starts strutting around like Popeye, and talking outta the side of his mouth, and clambering all over the mighty Rushmore headz of dead Prezez. But also, the ambush by the plane, in the middle of nowhere---what's he doing there, anyway? Is it a nightmare? No explanation that I recall. Lodged in the mind as a great set piece, and suspect it would even if (as may be) it's presented as plausible in context of thriller chess game. Who cares: awesome sauce.

i need to see more Eva Marie Saint films

O hell yes. Was gonna add: Social and psychological commentary, even attitude (mocking "strong," for inst) are just some of the ingredients (along means to the ends---even characters can be macguffins---for this creative showman and dealer in visual marvels.

aborted paren was going to mention visual marvels there

"No explanation that I recall."

there is an explanation.

i need to see more Eva Marie Saint films

― StillAdvance,

she was only in a few good ones

Eva Marie is still with us at age 92, nearly, and her DVD supp interviews are always fun and smart

i mean it makes no sense but there is an explanation. the bad guys send him there to supposedly wait for the mythical secret agent. even though the bad guys think that HE is the mythical secret agent.

at least she wasn't in The Fury :)

xxp