Last (x) movies you saw

*The Long Day Closes (1992, Davies) 9/10
Simon (1980, Brickman) 6/10
Part Time Wife (1930, McCarey) 5/10
*Westworld (1973, Crichton) 6/10
The Battle of the Century (1927, Bruckman/McCarey) (19m) 8/10
The BFG (2016, Spielberg) 6/10
Microbe and Gasoline (2015, Gondry) 7/10
Walt Curtis: The Peckerneck Poet (1997, Plympton, Curtis) 7/10
*Mala Noche (1986, Van Sant) 8/10
On Purge Bébé (1931, Renoir) 6/10
The Travelling Players (1975, Angelopoulos) 8/10
*La Chienne (1931, Renoir) 10/10
Open All Night (1924, Bern) 6/10
The Brink’s Job (1978, Friedkin) 5/10
*Attenberg (2010, Tsangari) 8/10

*The Master (Anderson, 2012) 7/10
Green Room (Saulnier, 2015) 7/10
Jupiter Ascending (The Warchowskis, 2015) 6/10
Tale of Tales (Garrone, 2015) 7/10
Muriel's Wedding (Hogan, 1994) 8/10

Fixed Bayonets! (Fuller, 1951) 9/10
Black Widow (Rafelson, 1987) 7/10
*Catch Me if You Can (Spielberg, 2002) 8/10
Shane (Stevens, 1953) 7/10
Batman: The Killing Joke (Liu, 2016) 2/10
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016) 4/10
Ghostbusters (Feig, 2016) 7/10

Alan Clarke: Dissent & Disruption box set (so far):
George's Room (1967) 6/10
The Last Train Through Harecastle Tunnel (1969) 5/10
Sovereign's Company (1970) 8/10
The Hallelujah Handshake (1970) 7/10
To Encourage the Others (1972) 8/10
Under the Age (1972) 7/10
*Horace (1972) 8/10
The Love Girl and the Innocent (1973) 6/10
*Penda's Fen (1974) 7/10

WANT that Clarke boxset

Anomalisa (DVD) Amusing at times but pretty pointless
Terminator: Genisys (Prime) Bleh
Medium Cool (DVD) Great, also awesome use of Love's "Emotions" for main theme
Midnight Special (DVD) Great!
Salo: 120 Days of Sodom (DVD) Saw Criterion at library and figured I should watch it finally--not exactly enjoyable
99 Homes (Prime) Andrew Garfield was... not good in this, but I thought Shannon was (in fact not sure why Garfield's character even needed to exist). A bit heavy handed maybe, but not sure how you make a movie like this otherwise...

watched Snow Angels and it was bad Sundance bait and a criminal waste of my hero Kate Beckinsale. and criminal waste of Griffin Dunne and Amy Sedaris for that matter. 4/10 (i don't know why anyone thought Garden State + In The Bedroom was a good idea. But film people are weird. the book must be better or something.)

i suggest a movie where griffin dunne and amy sedaris hire a nanny played by kate beckinsale and watch the sparks fly!

Chevalier 8/10 this year's Force Majeure

with a boner scene

Good boner scene in Cemetery of Splendour too

ha yes

Author: The JT LeRoy Story (Jeff Feuerzeig, 2016) - I didn't know about the story, was impressed by the diligence in taping all convos for so many years (providing the Courtney Love snorting coke down the phone to JTL 'aside'). From the readings I heard I didn't care for the writing, felt all desperate times for anglo publishing but there were things in it if you paid enough attention (and might reveal themselves in another viewing I'll never take). The sheer number/range of people taken in is impressive, lots of people who are sorta muddling (Asia Argento, Corgan, C Love, whatever) and were revealed - by the way they acted with JTL - to also share in that desperation to make something, get a project off the ground that would make enough noise, connect. Nothing really I wasn't aware of but it was exposed from a partic angle.

I'd forgotten I'd seen it (was dragged to a premiere screening a couple of months ago) but I was reminded when I saw Close-up (Kiarostami, 1990). All po-mo games aside it was about someone who wanted to be in films. Far more moving bcz it only bought him grief (although hints of a turnaround at the end which was v moving), confronted the reality that most people don't get to do anything and how common failure is.

I watched Breaking Glass the Hazel O'Connor film earlier this week. Had suggested it when somebody was looking for Punk movies a couple of weeks back and they'd said it was good. I hadn't seen it before i don't think but had like the music from it and read the book around the time. I would have been 12 or 13 at the time so don't think I'd've got to see it at the cinema.

I enjoyed it. Thought it was pretty well done. Actually better than I'd expected, dystopian in the way that Slade's Flame was or something. Still prety much of its time and maybe that was the thing about it.
Wanted to get Bloody Kids which I remembered from around the same time but it seems to have got stuck at half way through its download.

Frederik B- you remember that scene in Men & Chicken where Mads Mikkelsen pretends to be his bald brother at the school and lowers the shade so the kids can't see them? Do they hurt that woman? I couldn't work out what was supposed to have happened.

Well, I don't particularly remember that scene, no. I don't remember any scenes in that film with violence to women, but it does happen every now and then in the films of Anders Thomas Jensen. They are quite violent, and nobody is safe. So it's not out of the question, but I don't remember it.

I found the review I wrote last year, if anyone's interested: http://cinemascandinavia.com/film-review-men-and-chicken/

Anomalisa (Kaufman and Johnson, 2015) 8/10
Brooklyn (Crowley, 2015) 6/10
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (Hall, 1941) 7/10
Bitter Rice (De Santis, 1949) 7/10
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Black, 2005) 7/10

July

The Black Panther (Merrick, 1977) 7/10
Too Late for Tears (Haskin, 1949) 8/10
Lourdes (Hausner, 2009) 8/10
Knight of Cups (Malick, 2015) 7/10
Some Will, Some Won't (Wood, 1970) 6/10
The Neon Demon (Refn, 2016) 6/10
Faces (Cassavetes, 1968) 8/10
Hotel (Hausner, 2004) 6/10
Seul Contre Tous (Noe, 1988) 8/10
Go To Blazes (Truman, 1962) 5/10
Three Days of the Condor (Pollack, 1975) 7/10
Offside (Panahi, 2006) 9/10
Cemetery of Splendor (Weerasethakul, 2015) 9/10
Bone Tomahawk (Zahler, 2015) 7/10
A Touch of Zen (Hu, 1971) 7/10
I Married a Monster From Outer Space (Fowler, 1958) 8/10
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016) 5/10
Big Trouble (Cassavetes, 1986) 4/10
The Last Train Through Harecastle Tunnel (Clarke, 1969) 6/10
Earth vs the Flying Saucers (Sears, 1956) 6/10
Mr. Mom (Dragoti, 1983) 5/10

Hail, Caesar! (Coens, 2015)
Green Room (Saulnier, 2015)
*The Killing (Kubrick, 1956)
*Killer's Kiss (Kubrick, 1955)
Princess of France (Piñero, 2014)
A Touch of Zen (Hu, 1971)
Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul, 2004)

Duplicity (6.5)
Maggie’s Plan (7.5)
I Knew Her Well (7.5)
Nelson Algren: The End Is Nothing, the Road Is All... (7.0)
Wiener Dog (7.0)
Trudeau (7.0)
Thunderbolt & Lightfoot (6.5)
Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You (5.5)
Josie and the Pussycats (5.0)
Aloha, Bobby and Rose (6.5)

town & country ('01 peter chelsom) 2/10
what we do in the shadows ('14 jemaine clement & taika waititi) 8/10
criminal activities ('15 Jackie earle haley) 2/10
harper ('66 jack smight) 5/10
white palace ('90 luis mandoki) 7/10
the man in the moon ('91 mulligan) 7/10
*lost highway ('97 lynch) 6/10
the night before ('15 Levine) 6/10
shy people ('87 Andrei konchalovsky) 6/10

criminal activities is oddly based on a screenplay by the poet Robert Lowell; harper is inferior to its sequel

south (akerman 98, 8/10)
tokyo story (ozu 53, 10/10)
kes (loach 69, 8/10)
benefit of the doubt (whitehead 69, 5/10)
from the other side (akerman 2002, 7/10)
ten (kiarostami 2002, 7/10)
pool of london (dearden 51, 6/10)

*whitehead 67, that is

Jason Bourne (Paul Greengrass, 2016) - Sad to report the thing never recovered from the buddhist bare-knuckle fighter routine at the beginning of this.
Eva Hesse (Marcie Begleiter, 2016) - breathtaking misjudgment to use fucking CARTOONS to illustrate Eva's time in a concentration camp and hospital as she battled a tumour. Eva's work and some of the talking heads saved this.
Sid & Nancy (Alex Cox, 1986) - Lydon hilariously miscast otherwise think its good once it moves to just the two of them - builds on the utterly squalid atmos (with well-judged humour to provide some breathing space) and the central perfs are powerful. Nancy especially had to convey a hurtful history of family neglect, an unencumbered childishness plus a healthy dose of Warhol-level like blank. Pulled it off.
Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi, 2016) - first time in a long-time where I didn't know quite know where it was going. Still didn't so much by the end. Really good.
Sweet bean (Kawase, 2015) - the march of the Japanese humanist drama is relentless but this was good, actually didn't mind the incessant tugging of the heart strings that might've come in at the end, probably because there was no big conflict ever dramatised.

Cemetery of Splendor (Weerasethakul, 2015) 9/10

shit think I've missed this.

Swiss Army Man (Daniels, 2016)- 3.5/5
*Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (Hyams, 2012)- 4/5
Kung Fury (Sandberg, 2015)- 1.5/5
*Suspiria (Argento, 1977)- 5/5
Baron Blood (Bava, 1972)- 3.5/5
Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal: The Movie (Konner, 2016)- 1.5/5
The Thoughts That Once We Had (Andersen, 2016)- 3.5/5
Eva Hesse (Begleiter, 2016)- 3/5

weet bean (Kawase, 2015) - the march of the Japanese humanist drama is relentless but this was good, actually didn't mind the incessant tugging of the heart strings that might've come in at the end, probably because there was no big conflict ever dramatised.

I wanted to love it but it was way too mild.

The American Friend (1977) 4/5
The Night of the Iguana (1964) 3.5/5
Mr. Freedom (1969) 3/5
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) 3.5/5
Particle Fever (2013) 3.5/5
La Cienega (2011) 3/5
Ghostbusters (2016) 2/5
Lancelot du Lac (1974) 4/5

Sweet bean (Kawase, 2015) - the march of the Japanese humanist drama is relentless but this was good, actually didn't mind the incessant tugging of the heart strings that might've come in at the end, probably because there was no big conflict ever dramatised.

I wanted to love it but it was way too mild.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), 12. august 2016 05:13 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I watched Koreeda's Our Little Sister the other day, reminded me how good Sweet Bean is. There is real, actual shadows in that film, a sense of real darkness. I don't know, I like Kawase a lot.

Don't know about mild or dark - good attempt to get at filming people's internal journeys.

And the boiling of beans! Beautiful pictures of boiling beans.

No, what I mean is that Sweet Bean uses natural lighting a lot, and is filmed on overcast days, and in small unlit rooms. It seems wistful, subdued.

ah got it - yes all of that was v good.

The shot of cherry blossoms on the street for instance was beautiful and wistful (in Denmark the film was actually called The Moon Over the Cherry Blossom Trees. I spent some time laughing at that title change, until I saw the film, and it actually makes perfect sense) A lot of Japanese films use cherry blossom trees (Our Little Sister as well, though that scene is absolutely great) but it's rare to see the flowers on a street, next to a sewer, in rain. I was just happy to see the film, and in Danish cinema's, after Still the Water was such an amazingly bad film.

aw cmon lancelot du lac is at least a 4.5/5

A lot of Japanese films use cherry blossom trees (Our Little Sister as well, though that scene is absolutely great) but it's rare to see the flowers on a street, next to a sewer, in rain.

Probably a good piece to be written on how Cherry Blossom imagery has been played in Jap film and lit in a love-and-hate way over the decades.

Fritz Lang's Nibelungen. Great looking actors, costumes, hair, settings, great looking everything but I had to watch most of it on fast forward. Sorry. Annoying because there's still quite a few silent films I want to see, they have some of my favourite film imagery ever but I tend to enjoy the screenshots more than the films as a whole.

Jason Bourne (Greengrass, 2016)
Like Someone in Love (Kiarostami, 2012)
Eisenstein in Guanajuato (Greenaway, 2015)
Harikomi (Nomura, 1958)
Dreams (Bergman, 1955)
The Lobster (Lanthimos, 2015)
Queen of Earth (Perry, 2015)
Army (Kinoshita, 1944) - would be great in a double feature with some of Why We Fight

Peed Into the Wind (1972, McDowell) 5/10
Me and My Brother (1969, Frank) 6/10
The Whole Shootin’ Match (1978, Pennell) 7/10
Khartoum (1966, Dearden) 6/10
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) 7/10
Matinee (1993, Dante) 6/10
La Tendre Ennemie (1936, Ophuls) 8/10
La Bandera (1935, Duvivier) 7/10
La Horse (1970, Granier-Deferre) 6/10
*Night and Day (2008, Hong) 7/10
*The Candidate (1972, Ritchie) 9/10
*Purple Rain (1984, Magnoli) 6/10

The Gambler (7.5)
Helter Skelter (6.5)
Up the Junction (7.0)
Menace II Society (8.0)
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (7.0)
Fastball (7.0)
The Nun’s Story (8.0)
Firewall (6.0)
*A Face in the Crowd (8.0)
*The Best Man (7.5)

*Trump research

*Purple Rain (1984, Magnoli) 6/10

one of the few times recently when you've overrated a movie

Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016) - 5/10
Jason Bourne (Greengrass, 2016) - 4

Fantastic Planet (1973) - 7
Cat and the Canary, the (1939) - 4
Road to Singapore (1940) - 3
*You Only Live Twice (1967) - 5
The Good Dinosaur (2015) - 4
*Star Trek II (1982) - 8

you really need to relax and laugh at young Bob Hope, abanana

Purple Rain gets a 9/10 musically and 3/10 when people talk (or stare vacantly)

I liked Bob Hope, it was the rest of the movies that were the letdowns.

Road to Utopia is the best one with Crosby

loved Hell Or High Water

Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1975) 7/10
The Gambler (Reisz, 1974) 8/10
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016) 5/10
Ronaldo (Wonke, 2015) 5/10
Serpico (Lumet, 1973) 7/10
*The Lobster (Lanthimos, 2015) 8/10
Pretty Baby (Malle, 1978) 7/10
*The Falcon and The Snowman (Schlesinger, 1985) 6/10

The Falcon and The Snowman (on netflix now) didnt really hold up on the rewatch although Sean Penn is pretty great as the deluded wannabe spy. Like Jeff Spiccoli overloading on Le Carre novels. Boyce's motivation seems a bit muddle-headed but maybe this was true of the real Boyce? Movie drags a little bit too but it is an incredible story.

Pretty Baby (also on netflix) is definitely not a film that would have a hope of being made these days. Malle gets the period details spot on, little things like the paint peeling on the brothel walls. It makes for an unsettling watch though as its played so cold (and refreshingly free of judgement). Some awful acting from the brothel madam (Francis Faye) who recites her dialogue like a visually impaired woman reading from cue cards. The shocking scene where Brooke Shields is brought into the room for the delectation of old perverts and that final freeze frame of her at the train station stay with you.

Compulsion (Fleisher, 1951) 7/10
Tootsie (Pollack, 1982) 8/10
Putney Swope (Downey Sr, 1969) 7/10
Suffragette (Gavron, 2015) 6/10
The Purge: Election Year (DeMonaco, 2016) 7/10
The Reeds (Cohen, 2009) 3/10

Optimum's The London Collection boxset (great set of films all set against the backdrop of a redeveloping London. The first three I've logged on here before, but now I've finished the box:)

Pool of London (Deardon, 1951) 8/10
The Yellow Balloon (Thompson, 1953) 7/10
Sparrows Can't Sing (Littlewood, 1963) 8/10
The Small World of Sammy Lee (Hughes, 1963) 8/10
The London Nobody Knows (Cohen, 1967) 7/10
Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (Hickox, 1969) 4/10

rewatches:
In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950) 9/10
Repo Man (Cox, 1984) 8/10
Three Amigos (Landis, 1986) 8/10
Waking Life (Linklater, 2001) 8/10

Caught up with Love & Friendship on Amazon. Funniest movie I've seen all year.

lolly-madonna xxx ('73 sarafian) 6/10
trees lounge ('96 buscemi) 8/10
the big short (2015 McKay) 7/10
foxfire ('96 Annette haywood-carter) 3/10
bloodbrothers ('78 mulligan) 6/10
indignation ('16 schamus) 6/10
stardom (2000 arcand) 4/10
the Adderall diaries ('15 Pamela romanowsky) 4/10
the world, the flesh & the devil ('59 ranald macdougall) 2/10

So my wife and I went to see the new Jason Statham movie, Mechanic: Resurrection today. Did we expect it to be "good"? No. Did we expect it to be Elvis-movie bad? No, but it is. Like Elvis, Statham plays himself in most of his movies - he shows up somewhere, does the thing you've paid to watch him do (kick lots of anonymous dudes' asses), kisses a girl (in this case, Jessica Alba), and grimaces his way through approximations of human emotion (in this case, "I am angry," "I am momentarily happy," and "I am reluctant to embark on this orgy of violence, though you and I both know I must"). Sometimes these movies are quite good: I like Homefront and Safe a lot, for example. But Mechanic: Resurrection is almost laughably bad - it really feels like nobody involved in its making gave a shit. There are numerous blatant green-screens used to put exotic backdrops (Rio, Sydney) behind Statham's head; the script sets up the big action items with narration that sounds like a video game level is being explained to you ("in order to break into the impregnable prison and kill Villain X, here's what you're going to have to do"), and Tommy Lee Jones (who's in it for maybe five minutes, cumulatively) looks like he's calculating his salary into an hourly rate in his head the whole time. (Michelle Yeoh is also in it, and never hits or kicks anyone. What the hell is that about, I ask you?) And here's the final insult: One of the places Statham has to go is described, with great emphasis, as being surrounded by shark-infested waters. Statham is seen buying shark repellent ointment, and smuggling it into the prison/fortress. When he's about to escape, he takes off his shirt and slathers his entire torso in the shark repellent. He then dives into the water. Wouldn't you, the paying Jason Statham customer, naturally expect to see him fight a shark? Of course you would. What do you get? A single CGI shark drifting in the gloom behind a swimming Statham, and never coming anywhere near him. For that alone, I should have demanded a refund.