Last (x) movies you saw

how is The Coca-Cola Kid? maybe the last Eric Roberts vehicle that got good reviews

I thought it was pretty good, Roberts is solid and Greta Scacchi is great.

Just got finished watching Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, and I think it might be the best movie I've seen all year. US: Regeneration was an extremely dark, morose movie about PTSD, disguised as a direct-to-video action sequel, and US: DoR is a straight-up horror movie that combines elements of Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, and Gaspar Noé into something I've never seen before. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays the Colonel Kurtz role in this one, with Dolph Lundgren as his #2/enforcer; basically, they're hiding out in the swamp in Louisiana (I think?) with a bunch of other Universal Soldiers, all of whom have broken free of their government mental leashes and are now free to do whatever they want. But mostly what they do is hang out in their underground bunker, flexing and occasionally picking one of their number to beat the living shit out of. It's a real rat-overcrowding kind of situation. But the primary plot is centered on this guy John, whose family is murdered by Van Damme's character as the movie opens, in Noé-esque POV. When he comes out of the coma that JCVD beat him into, he goes hunting for him. Gradually, more and more is revealed about JCVD's plan, John's past, etc., etc. All of this is punctuated by periodic outbursts of truly mind-blasting violence. There's a fight in a sporting goods store between John and another dude known as "the Plumber" that's fucking amazing, and it's their second fight - the first time they meet, the Plumber comes at John with an axe and winds up getting half his foot chopped off, while John loses three fingers. (This is an extremely violent and gory movie. Not To Be Watched With The Kids In The Room.) Seriously, I can't believe what I just saw. Highest recommendation.

*Alps (2011, Lanthimos) 7/10
The Academy of Muses (2015, Guerin) 6/10
*The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968, Aldrich) 5/10
*The Glass Shield (1994, Burnett) 8/10
A Gentleman of Paris (1927, d'Arrast) 6/10
*Death by Hanging (1968, Oshima) 6/10
The Truth About Bebe Donge (1952, Decoin) 7/10
Razzia (1955, Decoin) 7/10
Witness in the City (1959, Molinaro) 8/10
Body and Soul (1931, Santell) 5/10
*Candy Mountain (1988, Frank, Wurlitzer) 7/10

also assorted Fatty Arbuckle shorts (1913-14)

he throws people through walls

I will have to check out The Glass Shield. I've only seen KOS and To Sleep With Anger and they both amazing movies.

only film to date featuring Ice Cube and Elliott Gould

ive been counting the days til they reunite

as nurse and assisted-living client

Phoenix (Petzold, 2014)
Run All Night (Collet-Serra, 2015)
Li'l Quinquin (Dumont, 2014)
No End (Kieslowski, 1985)
Melancholia (Von Trier, 2011)
A Most Wanted Man (Corbijn, 2014)
High-Rise (Wheatley, 2015)
Obsession (Dmytryk, 1949)
Ivan's Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1962)

Big thanks to the Killer of Sheep recommendations upthread, watched it last night and was pretty blown away.

Love and Friendship (Stillman, 2016)
Persuasion (Michell, 1995)
Separate Tables (Mann, 1958)
Syndromes and a Century (Weerasethakul, 2006)
Only Yesterday (Takahata, 1991)

Only Yesterday is fantastic. It's crazy that it took so long to get a North American release.

xp

KOS sort of reminds me of Rossellini's Germany Year Zero, which is another one I keep re-watching.

There was not a single thing about Hell or High Water I did not like. Its politics are weirdly fascinating - it works as both a far left and far right fantasy - but at the least, even though this could have been made or set just about any time in the past several decades, it felt like one of the most firmly contemporary movies I've seen in years.

I'll extend the list in a few days but A Bigger Splash delighted me more than any movie I've seen in weeks: sunburned Matthias Schoenaerts, mute Tilda Swinton, Italy, rocks, pools, Tattoo You.

Ralph Fiennes' best work too.

Just watched Sicario 'cause it was free on Hulu. Suggested marketing slogan: "You can't spell cartel without art!"

Whichever one of you psychos recommended "Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning," you were right that it is worthwhile, if almost entirely unpleasant. It's like Gaspar Noe directing a straight to video "Terminator" sequel.

Toldja.

Hell or High Water (Mackenzie, 2016) 7/10
Anthropoid (Ellis, 2016) 6/10
The Dead (Huston, 1987) 8/10
Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997) 9/10
Misery Loves Comedy (Pollak, 2015) 6/10

Rewatches:

Six Degrees of Separation (Schepisi, 1993) 8/10
The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese, 2013) 8/10
Predator 2 (Hopkins, 1990) 7/10

Re-watched most of Thief last night.

And now I'm re-watching John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, which I find legitimately frightening for some reason.

It's spooky and underrated, despite being (or maybe because it is?) half-baked.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Mizoguchi, 1939)
The Machine That Kills Bad People (Rossellini, 1952)
Street of Sham (Mizoguchi, 1956)
Q Planes (Whelan, 1939)
Nosferatu the Vampyre (Herzog, 1979)
*The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)
The Devils (Russell, 1971)

Midnight Special (Nichols, 2016) 5/10
*Suspicion (Hitchcock, 1941) 7/10
Everybody Wants Some!! (Linklater, 2016) 7/10
*Hugo (Scorsese, 2011) 4/10
45 Years (Haigh, 2015) 7/10
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (Nelson, 2015) 6/10
Zootopia (Howard and Moore, 2016) 8/10
*Pan’s Labyrinth (del Toro, 2006) 9/10
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon (Tirola, 2015) 6/10
The VVitch (Eggers, 2016) 7/10
*Slumdog Millionaire (Boyle, 2008) 3/10

*rewatch

Julietta (Almodovar, 2016) - really good and I've a friend who looks like the lead (older versh, who happened to text me asking whether I wanted to see it while I was in the cinema).
El Sur (Erice, 1983) - loved the father's evasions.
Nathalie Granger (Duras, 1972) - the space, I mean the emptiness is half-way realised. Friend I was with rightly pointed out Depardieu's character was forced.

El Sur (Erice, 1983) - loved the father's evasions.

For some reason while watching this I kept thinking that the father (and the actor playing him) could've stepped in from a Jess Franco film, which gave the film a kind of Spanish Gothic edge throughout - that genre feeling, plus the stuff w/ the pendulum and that great scene when the father and the daughter were water divining. Think it's interesting how both of Erice's fiction films edge up to horror and the allure of the dark - all those shadows, dark costumes. Spanish cinema has a lot of houses, and they're all haunted.

Yes.

I was so tired I fell asleep at points..the allusions to the Spanish civil war were so litghtly worked over as if it was a pleasant dream you forget as soon as you wake up, rather than a horrifying nightmare you remember for years afterwards.

The final Father-Daughter conversation was just perfect.

Nina (Clarke, 1978) 7/10
Cafe Society (Allen, 2016) 5/10
Beloved Enemy (Clarke, 1981) 6/10
Hell or High Water (Mackenzie, 2016) 6/10
El Sur (Erice, 1983) 8/10
Psy-Warriors (Clarke, 1981) 6/10
Baal (Clarke, 1982) 6/10
Stars of the Roller State Disco (Clarke, 1984) 4/10
Contact (Clarke, 1985) 8/10

Watched MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS (Schrader, 1985) last night - really impressed with it. It didn't move me as such, but its art and its attempt to capture Mishima's complexity were pretty noble, and worked adroitly around some pretty . Having read some of the negative reviews I suspect you get from it what you bring to it in terms of understanding him, so maybe not a success in that aspect. But the novel excerpts were so vividly and beautifully staged, and the score is classic. I think Schrader confronted a few of his own dichotomies (esp words vs action, surely a driver for every writer) and was good enough to bring us along.

ack, "worked adroitly around some pretty tight restrictions from his widow", I meant.

I'm a huge fan of Joe Dante, but had never seen Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Maybe I expected the worst, but just watched it with my younger one and we has a blast. Made me laugh a lot, and the in-jokes are ace.

Was just talking to someone about Schrader this weekend. She had been unaware of his religious upbringing and said knowing that put American Gigolo in a whole different light.

Against all my better impulses I went to a free preview of war on everyone, it is sophomoric unfunny tryhard bollocks (I know, who could have predicted?). Difficult to believe more than 10 years have passed since the death of guy ritchie from syphilitic dementia and yet you still encounter these people who think it's like the coolest smartest thing ever to have all your characters randomly recite facts the screenwriter knows. Sample of "witty" dialogue from this film:

-- who's doing the pickup?
-- the artist formerly known as prince, how the fuck should I know?

^I'd have been embarrassed to write this line in 1993, let alone today. I was eight in 1993. I have learned my lesson at this point and will never watch a film by a person named mcdonagh again.

With the exception of 'Calvary' everything the McDonagh's have done is total bollocks

Going to see "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" in the Cork Opera House a few years ago has probably put me off going to the theatre for life

Lucky to catch a screening of "Dead Slow Ahead" tonight: http://cinema-scope.com/cinema-scope-magazine/two-years-at-sea-an-interview-with-mauro-herce/.

Hypnotic and spooky documentary about life aboard a freighter. The guy who introduced the film said he thought it had elements of horror, but I thought it was more existential. Gorgeous images.

the jerk (reiner '79) 9/10
Caligula (tinto brass '79) 2/10
white girl (Elizabeth wood '16) 8/10
portnoy's complaint (ernest lehman '72) 7/10
cockfighter (hellman '74) 5/10
gia (Michael cristofer '98) 4/10

Elle ( Verhoeven) 8/10 -- Twisted and funny. Isabelle Huppert nimbly carries the whold damn thing on her shoulders. She puts most current film actors to shame.

*The Front (1976, Ritt) 6/10
Paterson (2016, Jarmusch) 8/10
Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016, Morrison) 8/10
*Day for Night (1973, Truffaut) 7/10
The Last Sunset (1961, Aldrich) 6/10
Death Is a Caress (1949, Carlmar) 7/10
The Thief and the Cobbler: A Moment in Time (1993, Williams) 7/10
*Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970, Jireš) 6/10
Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2015, Cone) 5/10
Apache (1954, Aldrich) 6/10

One Sings, the Other Doesn't (Agnes Varda, 1977) - This is one of the very best re-screenings I'll attend this year. I loved how well-drawn the intimate friendship was (and how well that was played by the leads). This was surrounding the women's movement but it showed the inner-workings of a politics: what are the outcomes of living your life in that way. This is especially so when Pauline has a relationship with a Westernized liberal Iranian man - what attracts, repels, the choices there are made (and there are choices, no one is trapped into anything although there is duty, that balancing act is worked through). A great scene where Pauline, in Iran, is wearing the veil and feels "closer to her body than ever". Incredible thing to hear given the climate in 2016.

The songs were funny and Varda was at her documentarian best when getting reaction from the locals: a mixture of applause (but were they hearing what they were singing about?) and indifference.

I'm trying to watch a new (to me, obviously) horror movie every day in October, and while I'm two days behind thanks to, you know, life, I'm hoping to catch up over the weekend. So far, it's been:
The Guest (Wingard, 2014)- 3.5/5
Body Melt (Brophy, 1993)- 2.5/5
The Nightmare (Ascher, 2015)- 3.5/5
Slugs (Simón, 1988)- 1.5/5

And the tentative shortlist for the next week and a bit:
Baskin
The VVVVVVitch
Shakma
Torso
Magic
Requiem for a Vampire
Marebito
Toad Road
Argento's Dracula

Argento Dracula is hiiiiiilarious

Marebito is pretty decent.

Skeleton Coast (Cardos, 1987)
The Sugarland Express (Spielberg, 1974)
The Gray Fox (Borsos, 1983)
Pumping Iron II: The Women (Butler, 1985)
Mysterious Island (Endfield, 1961)

Got about an hour into Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Journey To The Shore and lost interest.

Thanks again to Chris L for identifying The Great Silence from my vague description of cowboys in the snowy mountains. It's pretty good. A mute hero Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski as the villain, lovely Morricone music. A bit of a downer (there was an alternate happy ending included on dvd, made for north American and Asian audiences)but still quite pleasant for the setting, music and love scenes. There is an incredibly stupid moment where the sheriff tries to punch Kinski and somehow forgets the prison bars between them and hurts his hand.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) 5

The Last Broadcast (1998) 3
“X” (Corman, 1963) 7
Zootopia (various, 2016) 7
Xanadu (1980) 5
*Big Top Pee-Wee (Kleiser, 1988) 4
Deadpool (2016) 3
Court Jester, the (1955) 4
Witch, the (Eggers, 2015) 6
It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955) 2
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) 3
Island of Lost Souls (Kenton, 1932) 6
Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) 4
Basket Case (Henenlotter, 1982) 6
Fright Night (1985) 5

Saw The Accountant this weekend. The "absurd coincidences" called out in the negative reviews I read are no weirder or worse than others in the genre - they're par for the course, in fact, and were telegraphed all the way along by the movie's parallel structure. And really, come on: If you're going to see a movie about a guy who's simultaneously a brilliant accountant and a super-assassin, you've already agreed to absorb a significant degree of implausibility. So the question isn't whether the movie is "realistic" - it's whether the movie is internally logical and consistent. Does it play by the rules it's set for itself? The Accountant does. So if you're in the mood for a high concept crime thriller, go see it.

No Home Movie (--)
American Psycho (6.5)
Fight Club (4.0)
Putney Swope (7.0)
Dr. Strangelove (8.0)
Fail-Safe (6.5)
The Game (5.5)
Mother, Jugs & Speed (6.0)
Eight Days a Week (6.5)
The California Kid (5.5)