Last (x) movies you saw

Diving into Fassbinder - mix of MUBI/torrent and big screen (as posted about on the Fassbinder thread)

Effi Briest (1974) 8/10
Katzelmacher (1969) 6/10

Big screen:

Beware of the Holy Whore (1970) 10/10
I Don't Just Want You To Love Me (Hans Günther Pflaum, 1993) 5/10

iPlayer:

OJ: Made in America (Edelman, 2016) 7/10
Hypernormalisation (Curtis, 2016) 5/10

i hated the Coppola Dracula; so did Keanu. Stoker shoulda sued.

3 Coppolas I give a shit about:

Tetro
One from the Heart
Apocalypse Now

I can very well understand why Keanu hated the Coppola Dracula. I liked all the trompe-l'œil stuff - connecting Stroker/Dracula with the very beginnings of cinema etc - and the costuming. Bits of its happily remind me of the (much superior) BBC version w/ Louis Jourdan.

Like the Coppola Dracula for the same reasons but Keanu was awful in it and Hopkins' hamming almost as bad

https://www.berlinale.de/media/filmstills/2016_2/hommage_13/201603204_2_IMG_FIX_700x700.jpg

Like the Coppola Dracula for the same reasons but Keanu was awful in it and Hopkins' hamming almost as bad

'Cause what you want from a Dracula movie is subdued kitchen-sink realism. Mike Leigh should do one.

Reeves and Hopkins are both terrible in Dracula, but in the case of the latter, the performance has a certain fidelity to the novel, in which Van Helsing is a tiresome windbag that Stoker has ramble on at exhausting, skim-inducing length.

from what I remember about the movie, Coppola and Hopkins are in on the joke.

Coppola is the 70s auteur that I understand the least, in that while he obviously made some of the greatest films of that decade, I don't really know (very much Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman...) what he is about. If there is anything personal about his filmography, I haven't managed to locate it.

Not helping at all is that his post-70s filmography makes zero sense to me.

How do you define "personal"? A film, a poem, a story, whatever is an expression of self by its very nature.

Good question. By "personal," I mean that I can't figure out what draws him to the material he chooses. The 70s stuff is obviously marked by a very contemporary anxiety over and fixation with systems and how they can go wrong, but beyond that? I'm all about your definition of personal as artwork-as-expression-of-the-self; on that note, I can't figure out what he is expressing about himself through The Outsiders, Peggy Sue Got Married, Dracula, or Youth Without Youth.

He's expressing himself by paying his debts. "Personal" filmmaking is a residue of auteurist cinema; I don't believe it's important (I'm not picking you btw).

*picking ON you

I never thought you were!

Debt-paying, huh? Well, I guess that explains Jack.

With The Outsiders and Peggy Sue, he liked the material and needed to make some money -- they're no more or less personal than Tetro or The Conversation. Whether they're any good is a different question.

coppola's dracula is awful, there are at least four or five decent-to-classic film versions of the story better than that garbage

I thought Dracula was great spectacle the first time I saw it--saw it a couple more times, but it's been a few years.

I believe Coppola used to say The Rain People was his most personal film. Which to me says a lot about how much inherent value you should put into that idea.

Coppola had lost a ton of money on zoetrope and "one from the heart" in particular. dracula was another project he took on for money. he was a fan of the novel and it worked out. his commentary track on the blu-ray is worth a listen.

after his 90s movies he won $80 million to not make a pinocchio movie, so i'm guessing his later movies are passion projects. i don't really get a viewpoint from his movies either, but i haven't bothered to watch most of them.

It never really works but I really like his Dracula just for the amount of strong imagery, which puts it way ahead of most horror films in my book. It is really underwhelming when you think about how big a deal it was, but by the time I revisited it I really enjoyed it. Way more films should look like that.

Better Dracula films actually based on the story? Only the two Nosferatu films spring to mind.

Coppola's best films (Godfather I/II, Conversation, first 2/3 of ApocNow, Tucker) are inescapably visions of America.

His Dracula has less to do w/ Stoker than any version I've seen.

The Godfather movies are garbage.

Coppola's '70s peak is clearly all-time, but he made some excellent pics after. I like Rumble Fish in the same way I like The Warriors and Streets of Fire, for one. And The Outsiders, too. Peggy Sue is good.

The Cotton Club is a real good one, I think. lots of good performances and it has a lot of great spectacle and some moments of really good humor.

i think it's GOOD, in case i didn't say so

His Dracula has less to do w/ Stoker than any version I've seen.

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 19 April 2017 18:04

Among the adaptations surely? Most of the Hammer films, and films I've seen featuring Dracula are much further away.

I wrote on of my first reviews on Coppolas Dracula, for an assignment in high school. Except I never got a chance to see more than 15 minutes of the film, so the entirety of the review was based on the idea that the first 15 minutes were so bad they made me walk out. My teacher, who had chosen the film because she really liked it, was not amused, though. Still haven't seen the rest of the film. #TheMoreYouKnow

F.F. Coppola seems to do a lot of movies about men aging or not aging. Godfather Part I, Drac, Jack, Youth Without Youth.

The BBC Dracula mentioned upthread w/ Louis Jourdan is by far the best adaptation of Stoker's book I've seen.

Herzog's Nosferatu is the best Dracula I've seen.

The Godfather movies are garbage.

I can understand "not my thing" or "overrated," maybe even "ponderous" or "self-important." (If I feign objectivity, I mean.) But not that.

i dunno, i love unreservedly Coppola's Dracula. yes it is cheesy but it's about fucking vampires. i love the 90s-ness of it all, the incredibly stacked and hammy cast. i love how it goes so OTT with the in-camera effects and visual flair. i saw Herzog's in the theater last year and while it was a great film i would rather watch Coppola's in a hearbeat. it's a riot.

Struck by Lightning (5.0)
Near Death (8.5)
Get Out (6.0)
Our Man Flint (5.0)
Fathom (5.5)
When Michael Calls (5.5)
Game Change (7.0)
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (7.5)
Downloaded (7.0)
David Lynch: The Art Life (7.0)

The Lynch rating is provisional. I drifted off for as much as 15-20 minutes--the stuff right before his move to Philadelphia--and it's only a 90 minute film. (Saw it with two friends who are also both over 50; I think we fell asleep in shifts.) It was just a late weeknight screening--the film's very unusual, and I'd like to see it again when it plays closer to home. Lynch's art work, which I'd never seen before, is wild; they end the film at exactly the right moment.

Chaplin shorts:
— Shanghaied (1915)
— The Vagabond (1916)
— One A.M. (1916)
— The Count (1916)
— Easy Street (1917)
The Handmaiden (Park, 2016)
Hour of the Wolf (Bergman, 1968)
À Propos de Nice (short – Vigo, 1930)
2 Days in Paris (Delpy, 2007)
A Taxing Woman (Itami, 1987)
I Am Not Your Negro (Peck, 2016)
Dodsworth (Wyler, 1936)

*Stormy Weather (1943, Stone) 8/10
Illusions (1982, Dash) (34m) 7/10
*Seven Days in May (1964, Frankenheimer) 8/10
Sully (2016, Eastwood) 7/10
Bush Mama (1979, Gerima) 6/10
Graduation (2016, Mungiu) 7/10
*High School (1968, Wiseman) 8/10
Ecstasy (1933, Machatý) 6/10
*Everybody Wants Some!! (2016, Linklater) 7/10
Model (1980, Wiseman) 8/10
*Law and Order (1969, Wiseman) 10/10
The White Disease (1937, Haas) 7/10
*Paterson (2016, Jarmusch) 8/10
The Lost City of Z (2016, Gray) 8/10

Of Freaks And Men

Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016) 8/10
*Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954) 10/10
Arrival (Villeneuve, 2016) 8/10
*Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, 1970) 8/10
*O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Coen, 2000) 9/10
Gun Crazy (Lewis, 1950) 6/10
*Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957) 9/10

April:

What's Up, Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972) 8/10
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940) 6/10
One Million Years B.C. (Chaffey, 1966) 7/10
Malina (Schroeter, 1991) 8/10
Thief (Mann, 1981) 8/10
Palms (Aristakisyan, 1993) 9/10
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Gunn, 2017) 6/10
The In-Laws (Hiller, 1979) 7/10
The Perverse Countess (Franco, 1973) 7/10

Malina (Schroeter, 1991) 8/10

So good, especially if you've spent time reading Bachmann/know about her.

Schroeter's early films are amazing as well - not sure how available they are.

Choices: The Movie (Green, 2001) 6/10
A Quiet Passion (Davies, 2016) 8/10
Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, 1970) 8/10
Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979) 10/10
Messidor (Tanner, 1979) 7/10
A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (Iwai, 2016) 9/10
Something Wild (Demme, 1986) 7/10

Was really blown away by Rip Van Winkle, has anyone else seen it?

So good, especially if you've spent time reading Bachmann/know about her.

I don't know the novel it's based on, and this was the first Schroeter I'd seen, so I guess I was viewing the whole thing through a Jelinek filter (having not long ago read Wonderful, Wonderful Times, especially.) The savagery, the contempt for Nazis/Daddies, the repetition of actions (all that throwing and smashing and smoking) felt familiar. Would definitely like to see more Schroeter, read some Bachmann.

I like how cryptosicko paired four road movies with Rear Window, tied with Jeanne Dielman for the worst road movie ever.

20th Century Women (Mills 2016) 5 - weak structure made it feel like an unending slog.
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) 7
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962)* 9
Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich, 1964) 6
Maudie (2016) 4

Ward - Yeah Jelinek is a big fan of Bachmann although their fiction is quite different (Jelinek has a more confrontation approach). There is a really good collection called Three Paths to the Lake. Really love Malina the novel. Her poetry seems worth it from what I've read in the Faber Book of 20th Century German Poems (I believe she made her name as a poet first).

was enjoying Silk Stockings this morning but goddamn was Astaire too old to be playing that role, adds an unnecessary skeeziness to the whole thing

Burden, a documentary about Chris Burden. The surveillance-video-quality footage of his 1970s pieces are what most people are probably gonna come to this for, and yeah, you get to see him get shot, but some of the other pieces are even more amazing. ("Beam Drop"!) I've been obsessed with a sculpture of his, Medusa's Head, since seeing a photo of it in ArtForum in 1990, and seeing it again here it's even more impressive.

The Invitation (Kusama, 2015)
Get Out (Peele, 2017)
*The Fifth Element (Besson, 1997)
Citizen Dog (Sasanatieng, 2004)
Rhinoceros (O'Horgan, 1974)
The Taste of Tea (Ishii, 2004)
Rhinoceros (Lenica, 1964)
On the Silver Globe (Zulawski, 1988)

The new restoration of On the Silver Globe is mandatory viewing IMO. I'm glad I held out and didn't pick up the notoriously bad DVD transfer or anything in the interim- this movie is one of the most eerily beautiful things I've ever seen. From what I understand, most of its bizarre color palette comes from meddling with camera lenses, not Soviet film stock, but the effect is similar to Stalker; the pace and tone are nothing like it, of course, since it's a Zulawski joint. Also worth comparing to Aleksei German's Hard to Be a God- not as filthy, not as Bosch/Brueghel-y, not as drably hopeless but doing very similar work based on (what I understand to be) somewhat similar novels. It's a shame Jerzy Zulawski's books aren't available in translation, nor likely to be anytime soon.

I probably have the bad old transfer.

Carmelo Bene's Salome. My copy didn't have subtitles. Lots of characters ranting at each other, constant fast cutting and bright colours like a psychedelic music video, bare buttocks and gluttony. There's some incongruous elements like an old man in t-shirt/shorts and a pop song. I wasn't that into it but it's pretty visually impressive at times, I haven't seen much like it. Wonder how it would look remastered.