Last (x) movies you saw

Magic Mike (Soderbergh, 2012)
American Honey (Arnold, 2016)

Working class survival tale double bill!! Plenty to recommend in both tbh - what I liked about Magic Mike was how nothing was laid on too thick: the lack of money (due to the crash), the romance (that felt very real: stop-start, the waiting, the complicated getting-to-know-each-other business that almost goes up in smoke for good! And anyway, she is seeing someone else..), the seediness in business mixed with the friendships formed in there too.

Forest of Oppression — A Record of the Struggle at Takasaki City University of Economics (Ogawa Shinsuke, 1967)

The Shinsuke Ogawa season started at the ICA last night. I think this was pretty good as an early film (having some of the great later ones). Spending time with Marxist-Lenninist students and their failed, beaten down politics and half-digested jargon (I have followed that story on film all the way through to the United Red Army faction and its not pretty, nor would I recommend it) is not anybody's idea of fun but there is enough humour in the confrontation some of the students had with their parents. The riot scenes had a charge (but these scenes almost always have) but as a precursor for what he would go on to do its a good piece of the jigsaw.

Halfway through Betty blue, taking a quick break just to say: how the fuck am I only halfway through Betty blue?!

This is the directors cut to be fair, apparently the original release was an hr shorter. I'd probably have been way more into this if I'd seen it at the time, I'm enjoying it ok but not as much as diva

Manchester by the Sea (Lonergan, 2016) 8/10
La La Land (Chazelle, 2016) 7/10
* Lacombe, Lucien (Malle, 1974) 8/10
Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong, 2016) 6/10

I thought Buckaroo Banzai might be fun but it was surprisingly boring. Apart from the wonderful credits music.

I thought Buckaroo Banzai might be fun but it was surprisingly boring.

I've never understood the appeal of this movie.

I found it baffling in a not-exactly fun kinda way when I first saw it years ago, but I'm willing to give it another shot.

Hairspray (Waters, 1988) 4/5
A Blade in the Dark (Bava, not the good one, the shit one, 1983) 1.5/5
*The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (Argento, 1970) 4/5
Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art (Crump, 2015) 3/5
*The Cat O' Nine Tails (Argento, 1971) 3/5
*Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Argento, 1971) 4/5

This was somehow my first time seeing all of Hairspray as god/Waters intended instead of random chunks on Comedy Central when I was a kid. Kind of amazed how appealing it is without sacrificing much of the Waters sensibility- I mean, this is a movie where a big fist-pumping triumphant moment involves the heroine spitting in someone's open mouth. The Pia Zadora/Ric Ocasek scene may be my favorite cameo in anything, ever.

A Blade in the Dark fucking sucks, but it's a Lamberto Bava movie without Argento holding his hand, so that's pretty much to be expected. Literally the only noteworthy thing about it is the horrendous translation, which seems to get worse and worse as the film goes on, culminating in the line "Are you such a vacant nerd that your pleasure is to lie like a frog in the sun?"(paraphrased, since I can't find my awestruck note and nobody seems to have ripped the scene to youtube or even bothered to transcribe the line past "vacant nerd").

Troublemakers was a bit of a difficult watch because Carl Andre is a fucking creep.

Finally, I'm rewatching Argento in conjunction with Maitland McDonagh's Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds; this is the first time I've watched the "animal trilogy" so close together and it's been an interesting experience. The comedy doesn't get any better, though the Franciscus/Malden pairing in Cat is still fun; nothing looks as good as Vittorio Storaro's work in Bird (Cat suffers especially in comparison, but there are some surprisingly lovely shots of covered shopping arcades in Flies, and that dreamy final decapitation scene); and yes, I will still watch pretty much anything with Mimsy Farmer in it.

Next is the undeniable classic period of Argento (Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, Tenebre), Phenomena (which I value much more than McDonagh, and which I think has grown in stature over time, or deserves to), Opera (which I haven't watched in ages) and finally Two Evil Eyes, which I've never seen.

Wetlands has a lot of pointless scenes (the classical music on the pizza jizzing scene was such a hackneyed choice) but I don't know if there was much point to the film but I enjoyed it still. It looked great and Carla Juri's smile is so wonderful. She's going to be in the new Blade Runner.

Mann's Thief is pretty good, not much to say.

After I saw and loved Possession nearly a decade ago I watched another 7 Zulawski films then gave up because apart from some things in On The Silver Globe and Devil, and some humorous moments in the others they didn't really do anything for me. The philosophical ranting got a bit tiresome and I couldn't see much to grab onto.
But I'm so glad I bought Cosmos. There's still a lot of stuff I didn't get into but there's a lot more fun and beauty than I saw in most of the other films. The main character is hilarious and the woman he wants looks so much like Zulawski's previous female stars.
I might go back and try Blue Note and Boris Godounov. It's a shame he couldn't have made a few more new films.

So much fun watching Jonathan Genet's face. He's hardly been in anything.

Watched Takeshi's "A Scene at the Sea" (1991) (or ""That Summer, the Calmest Sea") and found myself baffled by its high reputation. It's extremely minimal (virtually dialogue free, composed static shots held for long meditative periods, simple plot and relationships) but rather than profundity I found it pretty empty. Maybe the DX7 cheese of the soundtrack has aged poorly, maybe the 90s audiences expected profundity from Japanese cinema, maybe I missed it. I'm a big fan of Ozu, Korēda and to a lesser extent Mizoguchi so I think I have a pretty good handle on actually-profound Japanese cinema. Anyone else seen it?

xp did you watch Szamanka? Its not really very good but the ending is all-time.

I agree. Some people rate it very very high but I don't get it. But even more incomprehensible to me is why some people completely adore That Most Important Thing: Love. Not that it's bad or anything.

Cosmos has been swimming around my brain really pleasantly for the last few days. It's been such a long time since anything lingered like that.

Finding films I really like seems very hard. Most of the time it feels like I'm effectively watching remakes.

I thought Buckaroo Banzai might be fun but it was surprisingly boring. Apart from the wonderful credits music.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 19 November 2016 18:11

Another thing that seemed like it should be fun was The Good The Bad And The Weird. Curiously dull.

inside Daisy Clover (1965, Mulligan)
The Crucifer of Blood (1991, Heston)
I'm Dancing as fast as I Can (1982, Hofsiss)
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976, Ross)
Phenomena (1984, Argento)
Carnal Knowledge (Nichols, 1971)
Alien Nation (Baker, 1988)
Murder By Decree (Clark, 1978)
Doctor Mordrid (Band & Band, 1992)

My Blu-Ray of Emperor of the North arrived today; watching it now. Trumponomics'll make hobos of us all by this time next year, so it's a good time to watch it.

Chevalier - thumbsup outta 10
King Cobra - this James Franco "haha I'm gay" thing is getting tedious but otherwise not bad
Certain Women - 2/3 awesome
Hell Or High Water - not blown away by this but nice to see my boy David Mackenzie back on a somewhat correct path after his however many days in the desert
War Dogs - I have nothing against Goodfellas but fuck this voiceover culture it has created, I think I've seen this exact film like 22 times. Actually, I do have something against Goodfellas: that stuff I just mentioned.
Jason Bournzzzzzzzzzzz
Dog Eat Dog - if Paul Schrader sucked me off in an alley for crack money I'd prolly respect his fall from grace more than I do now
The Greasy Strangler - is this just Napoleon Dynamite but with Old Man Cock?
Boy - awesome, better look up the Taika Waititi thread, which will involve spelling his name right in the search, but he's worth it
600 Miles the Tim Roth film was actually not bad
And I coincidentally watched "The Witness" the Kitty Genovese documentary by her brother (which I have specific thoughts about, but seems like now is not the time for serious Kitty Genovese conversations on this board) and a shitty drama called "37" that was theoretically set amongst her neighbours, which was worthless except for one particular child performance.

600 Miles is quite good, right? Better than Sicario, anyway.

Lol, 37 is directed by a Danish director who's the daughter of one of the most famous Danish producers. It's the best thing that studio has ever done, that's for sure.

600 Miles I am told was directed by the scriptwriter of Chronic, which I haven't got around to yet, but I liked in 600 Miles the camera placement and such, I was impressed the cliched "bonding" sequences took up a lot less second-act runtime than I would've expected, in fact structually this was quite well thought out.

Hm, from what I can see Chronic was both written and directed by Michel Franco? Also, it's shite imo. I really didn't like it. 600 Miles is directed by Gabriel Ripstein, son of Arturo Ripstein. Sidenote, but I do like that Tim Roth is in every Mexican movie all of a sudden. He was also thanked in the credits for Venezuelan film From Afar, which was produced by Gabriel Ripstein as well. Latin American cinema is doing quite well at the moment.

Yeah I was misinformed. He gets a Producer credit on Chronic is as far as it seems to go.

Was there ever a substantive discussion of Dope (Famuyiwa, 2015) here? I thought it was genuinely horrible.

And I coincidentally watched "The Witness" the Kitty Genovese documentary by her brother (which I have specific thoughts about, but seems like now is not the time for serious Kitty Genovese conversations on this board)

Genuinely curious what your qualms were about this film

What did you dislike about Dope? I thought it was a decent blend (tonally) of House Party and Risky Business. Silly, but enjoyable enough.

Just finished watching Green Room, a tight little siege movie with a punks vs. skins overlay. Grimy, with some truly shocking violence (what happens to one character's arm almost made me leap off the couch) and solid performances all around. Highly recommended, and streaming for free on Amazon Prime.

The Passenger (Antonioni, 1975)
Fear and Desire (Kubrick, 1953)
Le Samouraï (Melville, 1967)
Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (Maddin, 2003)
The Shooting (Hellman, 1966)
Black Girl (Sembène, 1966)
Arrival (Villeneuve, 2016)
House of Games (Mamet, 1987)

Shorts:
Black Something (Zellner/Zellner, 2016)
Daybreak Express (Pennebaker, 1953)

The Lovers and The Despot (Cannan/Adam, 2016) 4/10
I Am Not A Serial Killer (O'Brien, 2016) 7/10
*The Missouri Breaks (Penn, 1976) 8/10
13th (DuVernay, 2016) 6/10
Hunt For the Wilderpeople (Waititi, 2016) 8/10
Gloria (Cassavetes, 1980) 8/10

La Chienne (Renoir, 1931) 7/10
*Blow Out (De Palma, 1981) 8/10
Haunted Honeymoon (Wilder, 1986) 1/10
Radio Bikini (Stone, 1988) 7/10
Lonely Boy (Koenig and Kroitor, 1962) 6/10
Love and Friendship (Stillman, 2016) 7/10
Salvation Army (Taia, 2013) 6/10
Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel and Dali, 1929) 7/10
*Birth (Glazer, 2004) 8/10
*Strange Days (Bigelow, 1995) 6/10
Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara, 1964) ?/10

*rewatches

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (Miscavige et al., 2016) 3
Gate, The (Takács, 1987) 5
*Old Dark House, The (1932) 5
Zoolander 2 (2016) 3
Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General (Reeves, 1968) 5
You Can’t Take It With You (Capra, 1938) 3
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) 4
Hound of the Baskervilles, The (1939) 5
Curse of Frankenstein, the (1956) 7
Wave, the (Uthaug, 2015) 6
Lobster, the (2015) 9
Westworld (Crichton) 3
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, The (2015) 3
Muppets Most Wanted (2014) 6
Sour Grapes (2016) 7

The Asphyx (Newbrook, 1972) 5/10
Doctor Strange (Derrickson, 2016) 7/10
The Wicker Man 'final cut' (Hardy, 1973) 9/10
Born and Bred (Trapero, 2006) 6/10
Arrival (Villeneuve, 2016) 6/10
The Death of Louis XIV (Serra, 2016) 9/10
Gimme Danger (Jarmusch, 2016) 5/10
Paterson (Jarmusch, 2016) 8/10
Creepy (Kurosawa, 2016) 7/10

The Asphx looks hilarious.

Spelled it wrong

You might find the actual film to be not so consistently hilar, tho it has its moments. Robert Stephens is terrible in it.

So The Greasy Strangler is just Napoleon Dynamite but with more old man cock.

Actually according to my notebook I already watched this, I need to drink less

Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978) 10/10 rewatch
Boyhood (Linklater, 2014) 8/10
Partie de Campagne (Renoir, 1946) 9/10
Journey to Italy (Rossellini, 1954) 9/10
Brief Encounter (Lean, 1945) 9/10
Arrival (Villeneuve, 2016) 6/10
Single White Female (Schroeder, 1992) 6/10
Closed Curtain (Panahi, 2013) 8/10
Amour Fou (Hausner, 2014) 9/10
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them (Yates, 2016) 5/10

The Love Goddesses (Turell, 1965)
The Long Good Friday (Mackenzie, 1980)
Woodstock (Director's Cut) (Wadleigh, 1970)
Demolition Man (Brambilla, 1993)
Batman v Superman (Snyder 2016)
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 1983)
Burroughs: The Movie (Brookner, 1983)
A Taste of Honey (Richardson, 1961)
A.K. (Marker, 1985)

Call Girl, an incredibly bleak and depressing Swedish movie about a real-life 1970s prostitution scandal that involved juveniles and members of the government.
Morgan, a sci-fi thriller with an excellent twist that I kinda halfway saw coming, but which was still highly enjoyable. Stars Anya Taylor-Joy, who was also in The VVitch.

coherence (2013 james ward byrkit) 6/10
bombay beach (2011 alma har'el) 8/10
toby dammit (68 fellini) 8/10
from the life of the marionettes (80 bergman) 5/10
sawdust and tinsel ('53 bergman) 6/10
manchester by the sea (2016 lonergan) 6/10
abigail's party ('77 leigh) 7/10
love with the proper stranger ('63 mulligan) 4/10
the neon demon (2016 refn) 3/10
depalma (2015 baumbach/paltrow) 6/10

Treasure Island (1985, Ruiz) 8/10
Stir Crazy (1980, Poitier) 3/10
Home from the Hill (1960, Minnelli) 7/10
Race d'Ep [The Homosexual Century] (1979, Soukaz) 7/10
*Rose Hobart (1936, Cornell) (17m) 10/10
East of Borneo (1931, Melford) 5/10
Le sexe des anges (1977, Soukaz) 6/10
*It’s Always Fair Weather (1955, Kelly, Donen) 9/10
The Illinois Parables (2016, Stratman) 7/10
*Blow-Up (1966, Antonioni) 9/10
Drunk aka Drink (1965, Warhol) 8/10
Four Daughters (1938, Curtiz) 7/10

Midnight Special (Nichols, 2016) 6/10
Embrace of the Serpent (Guerra, 2015) 8/10
Captain America: Civil War (Russo, Russo, 2016) 4/10
The Survivalist (Fingleton, 2015) 3/10
Supersonic (Whitecross, 2016) 5/10
Green Room (Saulnier, 2016) 7/10
Everybody Wants Some!! (Linklater, 2016) 6/10
Arrival (Villeneuve, 2016) 7/10
Room (Ahbrahamson, 2015) 8/10
A Walk in the Woods (Kwapis, 2015) 5/10
Knife in the Water (Polanski, 1962) 8/10

rw:
Cul-de-sac (Polanski, 1966) 9/10
The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Hellar, 2015) 7/10
Spaceballs (Brooks, 1987) 6/10
Uncle Buck (Hughes, 1989) 6/10
if.... (Anderson, 1968) 7/10

Supersonic (Whitecross, 2016) 5/10

aw cmon, this was great fun. id recommend it to people who aren't even fans of Oasis

Things to Come (Hansen-Løve, 2016) 7/10
20th Century Women (Mills, 2016) 6/10
Nocturnal Animals (Ford, 2016) 3/10
Manchester by the Sea (Lonergan, 2016) 8/10
Sully (Eastwood, 2016) 6/10
Arrival (Villeneuve, 2016) 6/10
13TH (DuVernay, 2016) 9/10
I, Daniel Blake (Loach, 2016) 7/10
A Shock to the System (Egleson, 1990) 5/10
* Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964) 6/10
* Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut) 8/10
* Ordet (Dreyer, 1955) 7/10

Kind Hearts And Coronets
A Royal Affair

Really enjoyed both

Secret Sunshine
A Man Escaped
Shane
Dodes'ka-den
Police Story III
A Brighter Summer Day
Manchester by the Sea
Rashomon

A couple of 10/10s in there.

Movies seen on planes this week (including two mentioned above):
Call Girl* (Sweden, 2012)
Morgan**
Jason Bourne~
Star Trek Beyond~
* = good
** = very good
~ = boring & bad

Saw "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" with the family. I wasn't exactly excited to see it, but I was shocked at how unbearably boring it was. Just a total slog, imo, dull as dirt, and probably 90 minutes too long, like "Men in Black" crossed with Peter Jackson's "The Frighteners," but twice as long as either. My 9-year old turned to me half way through and said "this movie is nothing but things breaking."

The Sign of Venus (1955, Risi) 8/10
Barefoot in the Park (1967, Saks) 5/10
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1979, Ruiz) 8/10
*Champion (1949, Robson) 8/10
Night World (1932, Henley) 6/10
They Made Me a Criminal (1939, Berkeley) 6/10
Daughters of the Dust (1991, Dash) 7/10
*The Magnificent Seven (1960, J Sturges) 8/10
*Genealogies of a Crime (1997, Ruiz) 7/10
*The Producers (1968, Brooks) 9/10

Downhill Racer (Ritchie, 1969)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (director's cut - Cassavetes, 1976)
Brief Encounter (Lean, 1945)
The Lion Has Wings (Powell, 1939)
24 Frames Per Century (short - Tsangari, 2013)
Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)
Tunes of Glory (Neame, 1960)
citizenfour (Poitras, 2014)
Junkopia (short - Marker, 1981)
Cairo As Told By Youssef Chahine (short - Chahine, 1991)
Belladonna of Sadness (Yamamoto, 1973)

casualties of war (depalma 89) 6/10
its a wonderful life (capra 46) 10/10
southpaw (Fuqua 15) 5/10
dog eat dog (Schrader 16) 7/10
nocturnal animals (ford 16) 5/10
zebrahead (Anthony drazan 92) 7/10

miles ahead (cheadle, 2016) 6/10
arrival (villeneuve, 2016) 6/10
*groundhog day (ramis, 1993) 10/10
a bigger splash (guadagnino, 2016) 7/10
electra glide in blue (guercio, 1973) 8/10
the hallelujah handshake (clarke, 1970) 8/10