Last (x) movies you saw

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.

Why do you this to yourselves?

High Heels (Almodovar, 1991) - In a post-Cruz worl its easy to forget how good Abril was.
Ingrid Bergman: In her Own Words (Stig Björkman, 2016), found her to be almost a prototype for someone like Huppert - certainly a transitional figure - between Hollywood and art house, in her desire to work with specific directors, to do things because they might be great not just for cash and fans (although the equation isn't as straightforward as all that), and to cut and run and re-build when things aren't working (lesson to us all here, although not having kids might also be a good idea).

Both films touch on Autumn Sonata. That was a remarkable coincidence.

*Being There (7.0)
*The Magic Christian (3.0)
*Bob Roberts (6.5)
*Bulworth (5.5)
Art & Copy (7.0)
*The Truman Show (7.0)
*The Dark Knight (7.5)
*Superman (7.0)
Under the Sun (7.0)
Don't Blink - Robert Frank (7.5)

*Trump research

The In-Laws (Hiller, 1979) 6/10
Mustang (Ergüven, 2015) 8/10
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016) 2/10
The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer, 1962) 7/10
Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939) 5/10
*Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Spielberg, 1989) 9/10
*The Great Outdoors (Deutch, 1988) 4/10
The Best Intentions (August, 1992)

*re-watch

Er,

The Best Intentions (August, 1992) 7/10

Always hate it when someone makes a big deal out of ratings on this thread--mine are purely in the moment, not a great deal of deliberation--but I'm interested in the relatively mild response to Manchurian Candidate. Not that I think it's perfect or anything--the Sinatra/Leigh romance always seems really out of place whenever I watch it. But I think the brainwashing and the paranoia and just the whole conception are great. I remember my parents getting me to watch it on TV at a fairly young age--11 or 12 or something--and then it disappeared for a long time after that.

Manchurian Candidate was one of my major blind spots for years; thank Criterion for finally spurring me into action. Probably the main reason why I'd never made it a priority is because of its reputation as being "political," which generally isn't my thing. And it is more than likely that my relatively muted response to the film has to do with my own political cynicism--"paranoia," I think, supposes that one begins in a place of at least some idealism, and I've operated under the basic assumption that politics are evil and corrupt for as long as I can remember, so there isn't much that's revelatory about this or others in the whole "paranoid" cycle (one could make the case that there is something generational about this; Watergate was before my time, and my earliest exposure to politics was via SNL and other such comedies taking shots and Reagan and Bush Sr). No surprise, then, that the much more cynical and ridiculous Dr. Strangelove is far more my speed (which brings me to another minor letdown re: MC--where Stragelove has *at least* three great performances, Lansbury is the only one who is really in top form in MC).

That said, the film looks stunning and those early hypnosis/demonstration scenes are beautifully staged and genuinely frightening. I also have to admire the nerve it took to make it--not in terms of pushing uncomfortable political buttons but just in terms of how daffy the story is. This thing must have look just nuts on the page, and for Frankenheimer, Sinatra, Leigh and Lansbury to all commit to it is impressive.

Killing Ground (2016) 8/10
After the Storm (2016) 9/10
Umimachi Diary (aka Our Little Sister, 2014) 7.5/10
Bakuman (2015) 7/10
Ukigumo (Floating Clouds, 1954) 7/10
Kicking and Screaming (1995) 4/10

A lot of Japanese viewing, when I list it!

c'mon crypto, Sinatra was never better.

also it's NUTTIER on the page! read the novel.

Pretty sure it's the only Sinatra I've seen tbh. Unless his appearance on Who's the Boss counts (in which case, yes, this us better).

August:

Sovereign's Company (Clarke, 1970) 7/10
Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach (Osmond, 2016) 6/10
The Hallelujah Handshake (Clarke, 1970) 6/10
To Encourage the Others (Clarke, 1972) 8/10
Topaz (Hitchcock, 1969) 6/10
The Shadow of the Cat (Gilling, 1961) 6/10
Four of the Apocalypse (Fulci, 1975) 7/10
Under the Age (Clarke, 1972) 5/10
Horace (Clarke, 1972) 7/10
The Love Girl and the Innocent (Clarke, 1973) 7/10
A Follower for Emily (Clarke, 1974) 6/10
God Told Me To (Cohen, 1976) 8/10
The Childhood of a Leader (Corbet, 2015) 7/10
Diane (Clarke, 1975) 7/10
Funny Farm (Clarke, 1975) 6/10
The Insider (Mann, 1999) 6/10

Wow, that's a high grade for After the Storm, MatthewK. Can you say a bit more about it?

Watched ab it of Frank last night but didn't really get into it.
Obvioulsy the large artificial head looks like its lifted from Frank Sidebottom the Chris Sievey character from the 80s but that seems to be about as far as that goes.

THink I was in the middle of doing a number of other things or might have paid it more attention.

Innisfree (1990, Guerin) 7/10
Work in Progress (2001, Guerin) 8/10
Happy Hour (2015, Hamaguchi) 6/10
Hell or High Water (2016, Mackenzie) 8/10
*Rodrigo D: No Future (1990, Gaviria) 7/10
Bell, Book and Candle (1958, Quine) 6/10
The Fool Killer (1965, Gonzalez) 7/10
Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962, Zugsmith) 5/10
Theatre of Blood (1973, Hickox) 6/10
Hail, Caesar! (2016, Coen, Coen) 5/10
Little Men (2016, Sachs) 8/10
Ornette: Made in America (1985, Clarke) 7/10
The King of Texas (2008, Pinnell) 6/10
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974, Cimino) 7/10

Election (2016, Menon) 2/10

Equity, sorry. Election is a solid 8/10

Sinatra is first-rate in The Manchurian Candidate!

whereas I can barely watch Dr. Strangelove

Way way too low on Theatre of Blood, Morbs

i find even the high end of V Price camp comedy gets wearying after first 40 mins

also Robert Morley in pink suit is a bad fag joke

the best scene is when he beheads Arthur Lowe

Wow, that's a high grade for After the Storm, MatthewK. Can you say a bit more about it?

― Frederik B

Rosemary's Baby (Polanski, 1968)
Ornamental Hairpin (Shimizu, 1941)
Morning for the Osone Family (Kinoshita, 1946)
*The Limey (Soderbergh, 1999)
In Heaven There Is No Beer? (Blank, 1984)
Twenty-Four Eyes (Kinoshita, 1954)
What Is Cinema? (Workman, 2014)
The French Lieutenant's Woman (Reisz, 1981)

Man, Twenty-Four Eyes is an emotional shotgun. I found it too heavy-handedly elegiac, but I can see why it was so beloved in postwar Japan.

Re-watched The Lords of Salem last night. Not only is it Rob Zombie's best movie by about a hundred miles, it's also one of the best horror movies of the 21st Century.

Mia Madre (Moretti, 2016) 7/10
Little Men (Sachs, 2017) 8/10
The Childhood of a Leader (Corbet, 2016) 7/10
No Home Movie(Akerman, 2016) 9/10
Zootopia (Howard, Moore, 2016) 7/10
In Jackson Heights (Wiseman, 2015) 9/10
Opening Night (Cassavetes, 1977) 6/10
The American Friend (Wenders, 1977) 5/10
The Immortal Story (1968, Welles) 7/10
* Pierrot le Fou (Godard, 1965) 9/10
* Theodora Goes Wild (Boleslawski, 1936) 7/10
These Three (Wyler, 1936) 7/10

WilliamC: Any thoughts on Rosemary's Baby?

"heavy-handedly elegiac" is pretty apt, but it was still quite moving. I've seen Army, Osone Family and 24 Eyes in a fairly short window this summer and it's opened my eyes to Kinoshita in a new way. I'd seen four of his films before this, but only Carmen Comes Home stayed with me. (Phoenix, Onna and The Snow Flurry were the others.)

xps to MatthewK

I don't know Kinoshita's other work, sounds worthy of investigation. Naruse's Ukigumo (Floating Clouds) explores a similar postwar vibe but with quite different emphasis. Felt similar in tone though.

Clemenza -- I enjoyed Rosemary's Baby, but I can't help coming back to my initial reaction, which is that it was mostly hilarious. I don't know if that's just enjoyment of Ruth Gordon's character bleeding out into the rest of the film or what. Was it an ILXor, maybe Alfred, who pointed out how dyspeptic Cassavetes looked throughout?

Matthew, I highly recommend Army and Morning for the Osone Family to go with 24 Eyes as a WWII triptych.

Are we anticipating Hacksaw Ridge

(xposts) I thought the no-asterisk meant it was your first viewing of Rosemary's Baby...I think it's exceptionally funny, on top of 100 other kinds of brilliance--pretty much my favourite film alongside Nashville.

i have no doubt a pretentious semi-ass like Cassavetes thought he was making a drive-in potboiler

It was my first viewing! The gaps in my education show themselves occasionally.

Alfred, how does These Three work while burying the lez plot?

Barely! As usual it's Wyler's eye for performances that helps. The last half hour's a mess though.

a better bowdlerizing of the Hellmann play than The Children's Hour.

I enjoyed Rosemary's Baby, but I can't help coming back to my initial reaction

Okay, I misunderstood--thought this meant you'd seen it before. Initial = immediate.

yep

Miller's Crossing (1990; rewatch) 4/5
Weiner (2016) 3.5/5
The Knack... and How to Get It (1965) 3/5
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) 3.5/5
Anomalisa (2015) 4/5
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) 3.5/5
Appropriate Behavior (2014) 3.5/5

I re-watched Miller's Crossing this week, too. Easily my favorite Coen Brothers movie. Nothing else they've done even comes close for me.

what is yr fave Warner Brothers gangster movie?

the ruling class (medak 72, 6/10)
d'est (akerman 93, 8/10)
black narcissus (powell and pressburger 47, 8/10)* (rewatched)
the man who fell to earth (roeg 76, 8/10)*
pina (wenders 2011, 7/10)
river of grass (reichardt 94, 6/10)
duelle (rivette 76, 8/10)
noroît (rivette 76, 7??/10???)

Noroît is the kind of experimental film where both the stakes and the outcome are unclear, but many of its setpieces are stunning, especially the cascade of laughter and shrieks ("performed" and "sincere") during the pirates' amateur theatrical and the wild choreography of the concluding massacre at the masked ball. Duelle's premise is so strange that I was taken aback by how enveloping the film felt, film noir dissected into a series of dreamlike gestures.

I also kind of love how far Rivette was willing to go with camp aesthetics in these films, especially in the costume design; the later films of his I've seen seem somewhat more austere in this regard.

https://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/noroit1.jpg
https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/noroit42.jpg
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/duelleberto.jpg
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/duelle51.jpg

I also kind of love how far Rivette was willing to go with camp aesthetics in these films

It's definitely a theatrical aesthetic - the idea of 'dress-up' is important to lots of Rivette - or, "the romance of certain old clothes".

https://www.filmlinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/celineandjulie3-1600x900-c-default.jpg

As yr first still indicates (and it's great to finally have access to high quality images from these films), never undestimate the 'supernatural element' in Rivette either (alternative title for Celine and Julie - "Phantom Ladies over Paris", which is p much the plot of Duelle).

Rivette was supposedly a big reader of occult and supernatural literature. There's an interview on the dvd of "Story of Marie And Julien" where he spends a bit of time correcting the interviewer on the differences between ghosts and phantoms.

new hansen-løve/huppert film got me with deployment of the fleetwoods' unchained melody

Love and Mercy (Phlad, 2014) 6/10
Budawanny (Quinn, 1987) 7/10
The Childhood Of A Leader (Corbet, 2016) 6/10
Sing Street (Carney, 2016) 8/10
Close-Up (Kiarostami, 1990) 8/10

Close-Up = Sing Street? You are grounded, young man