Last (x) movies you saw

I just watched Mambety's "Hyenas", which popped up on YT (not ideal but hey). Great allegorical film

The Crowd (1928) 2.5/5
GLOW (the documentary; 2012) 3/5
Tour de Pharmacy (2017) 3/5
The Gleaners & I (2000) 3.5/5
The Lusty Men (1952; rewatch) 4.5/5
Fateful Findings (2013) 0.5/5
Baby Driver (2017) 3/5
Mifune: the Last Samurai (2016) 2.5/5
Mulholland Drive (2001; rewatch) 5/5
Tampopo (1985; rewatch) 4/5

Peter Tscherkassky shorts:
The Exquisite Corpus (2015) 4/5
The Arrival (1998) 3.5/5
Manufractur (1985) 3/5
Dream Work (2001) 4/5
Outer Space (1999; rewatch) 4.5/5

New Waterford Girl (7.0)
Reagan (7.0)
The Stepford Wives (remake—3.0)
20th Century Women (8.0)
Experiment in Terror (6.5)
Manson (6.5)
La belle saison (7.5)
The American Friend (6.5)
Citizen Jane (7.5)
Marie Antoinette (7.0)

The Dressmaker, with Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Hugo Weaving, and the non-Thor Hemsworth. It was pretty shocking in a lot of ways: a) how draggy Winslet looked throughout (she was wearing a lot of early 1950s ball gowns and cocktail dresses, with makeup to match, in the middle of the Australian desert); b) plot twists which I won't go into here; and c) how the population of a town in rural Australia was portrayed as basically a cross between Peyton Place, the townspeople from High Plains Drifter, and Deliverance. The last part was the most surprising to me, and I've seen Wake in Fright. You could never release a Hollywood movie that depicted the population of "real America" as a bunch of vicious, sniping, willfully ignorant trash who drove the only decent person in their shitty little town away behind some bullshit, and then portray her coming back and (semi-SPOILER) killing half of them as some kind of victory. Fox News Channel would never let you hear the end of it.

Past Life - 5/10
It Comes at Night - 2/10
Wakefield - 6/10
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) - 9/10
Rough Night - 6/10
Beatriz at Dinner - 7/10
The Hero - 4/10
Scum (1979) - 8/10
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) - 9/10
The Beguiled - 9/10
Blow Out (1981) - 8/10
The Big Sick - 0/10
Spider-Man: Homecoming - 3/10
Baby Driver - 9/10
The Little Hours - 6/10
War for the Planet of the Apes - 8/10

The Big Sick - 0/10

― flappy bird, Monday, 17 July 2017 17:43

Wow, it's that bad?

yep. let's see:
1) completely unlikeable, unctuous lead
2) you expect there to be some tie-in to the healthcare crisis in a movie called THE BIG SICK, but nope, everything is fine! no bills, no loans, no evil insurance companies
3) not funny at all. it's the epitome of contemporary comedy consisting of simply "making good points," bland moralizing & half-baked drama at the expense of jokes
4) vapid navel-gazing autobiography. again, you expect a movie called THE BIG SICK to make some comment on healthcare in America, but it's just the story of how Kumail and Emily met & got married
5) another piece of post-Louis dross that expects us to sympathize with the most loathsome and untalented people on earth - open mic stand ups. fuck off

I'm fond of Nanjiani so I still might see it.

for sure if you like him you'll like the movie

man can't believe a film that never at all professed to be this weird thing that you for some reason expected it to be turned out to not be that thing

like it was billed as this autobiographical meet-cute-turned-unexpected-medical-disaster flick and you went in expecting a Michael Moore piece?

Lost in Paris (Abel, Gordon, 2017) 5/10
The Ornithologist (Rodrigues, 2017) 8/10
Baby Driver (Wright, 2017) 7/10
The Beguiled (Coppola, 2017) 5/10
The Student (Serebrennikov, 2017) 6/10
The Beatles: Eight Days a Week (Howard, 2016) 7/10
* Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966) 8/10
* Clash of the Titans (Davis, 1981) 7/10
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Cimino, 1974) 7/10
* Shame (Bergman, 1967) 9/10
* Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946) 10/10

Lots of Pialat -- all a solid 9/10:

A Nos Amours
Sous Le Soleil de Satan
Police
Passe Ton Bac D'abord

Alien:Covenant (5/10)
Wonder Woman (6/10)
Endless Poetry (8/10)
A Quiet Passion (9/10)
The Mummy - 2017 version (2/10)

oh yeah and...

L'important C'est D'aimer (Zulawski) - 9/10

I saw "The Beguiled" last night. Quite tame and tepid imo

Kedi (meh)
Babylon (great time capsule of early 80's Brixton)
Penda's Fen (batshit great)
War For The Planet Of The Apes (social commentary turns into action movie; I can see why ppl like these movies so much)
The Climber (so so eurocrime flick with Joe D'Alessandro)
A Trip Down The River (my introduction to communist-era Polish cinema)

man can't believe a film that never at all professed to be this weird thing that you for some reason expected it to be turned out to not be that thing

― Neanderthal, Tuesday, July 18, 2017 10:13 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like it was billed as this autobiographical meet-cute-turned-unexpected-medical-disaster flick and you went in expecting a Michael Moore piece?

― Neanderthal, Tuesday, July 18, 2017 10:17 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't see any trailers or advertising beyond the poster. I went in cold. I really, really don't like the lead guy. Everyone has their problem actors. Wasn't interested in seeing his life story.

i have plans to watch Capricorn One tonight. it sounds pretty crazy, i've been looking forward to this for a while.

Rewatched both Zulawski's Possession and Tree of Life tonight for the first time in years. Two of my absolute all-time favorite films (for almost polar opposite reasons), solid 10s. I feel like I could watch these things weekly and get something out of the experience every time but I think they're going back in the vault for awhile so they still feel amazing the next time I see them.

Pan's Labyrinth. Not as much of a kid's movie as I had feared.

Zulawski seemed to really dislike Malick's work.

I've still never seen any Malick but I'll keep Tree Of Life in mind.

*Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
Sunday in Peking (short - Marker, 1956)
Buffalo Bill and the Indians (Altman, 1976)
Paterson (Jarmusch, 2016)
The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (short - Marker/Reichenbach, 1968)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (Watts, 2017)
The Ninth Configuration (Blatty, 1980)
Le Cercle Rouge (Melville, 1970)
Baby Driver (Wright, 2017)
and a couple of Stan Brakhage shorts and the prelude to Dog Star Man

I seem to really dislike Zulawski's work

ppl seem to be persistently confusing "insane" with "good"

Always need a follow-up for non-rating WC: what did you think of Buffalo Bill?

I've found most of Zulawski disappointing (even some that are considered his best) but that's only because he's so damn good some of the time.

I expected to love Buffalo Bill and did -- I think it's up there with his best 1970s work, which is saying a lot. Filmstruck added six Altmans a couple of weeks ago and that was the one I watched immediately. I don't know if I'll bother with The Delinquents (1957), but Secret Honor and Vincent and Theo are in my queue to watch.

I have been big Cannonball A fan for years William, but it was only recently I discovered the Cannibal (your last dn) origin of his stage-name!

(xpost) I liked it, not quite that much. Try to track down Nightmare in Chicago, a TV movie from '64.

Capricorn One (1978) was pretty good. a bit long, though just about every scene could have a few minutes cuts and the movie wouldn't lose anything. often it feels like the movie is just taking a 70s smoke break. still the premise was pretty cool, there is some good cinematography (lots of nice interiors of retro blinking lights consoles and giant video screens), and there are some good speeches and performances throughout. the story itself was really cool, it was fun to see where the movie was going to take us.

unfortunately the ending was botched in a really weird way. it's this great climax to the story but it keeps cutting between two groups, one them playing out in real time, one of them playing out in slow motion, the slow motion getting slower and slower until it is comically ticking by one frame at a time. then i cuts back to the reaction shot running in real time. then back to the awkward frame by frame slow motion. i thought something was wrong with the movie or something. was this on purpose? it freezes on a really dumb image and ends the movie. kind of feels rushed compared to the rest of it.

L'enfance Nue (Pialat) 9/10
Interstellar (Nolan) 6/10
The Dark Knight (ditto) 4/10 - still can't finish this slog of a film.
The Body (Battersby) 8/10

The Executioner (1963, Berlanga) 7/10
Café Society (2016, Allen) 5/10
A Master Builder (2013, Demme) 7/10
Film About a Woman Who… (1974, Rainer) 6/10
*Cemetery of Splendour (2015, Weerasethakul) 7/10
*Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984, Spielberg) 9/10
*Interiors (1978, Allen) 6/10
*Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970, Perry) (93m version) 8/10
The Middle of the World (1974, Tanner) 7/10
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014, Reeves) 7/10

Who's Crazy? (1966) - Only memorable for its score, improvised by the Ornette Coleman Trio while the movie was being screened for them. The film itself is infuriating hippie garbage; the director and all the actors should have been beaten by riot police.

1984 (1984) - An amusing trifle. John Hurt looks older than Richard Burton in it, and Burton died before it was released.

Picture Day (6.5)
Mon Oncle Antoine (8.0)
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (7.5)
Blume in Love (7.0)
Adrift in Manhattan (6.0)
Beatriz at Dinner (7.0)
Dawson City: Frozen Time (7.5)
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (8.0)
Rear Window (9.0)
Birth (6.5)

I don't really remember being aware of Birth when it came out (unless I just avoided it because I thought Sexy Beast so overrated). Not necessarily good--ultimately amounts to nothing--definitely weird. I think it's a prophecy of Trump--everything ever is about Trump. Guy shows up one day, says "I'm the president." Some people believe him, some don't.

La Maison Des Bois (TV series/Pialat) : 10/10
Report To The Commissioner: 6/10
Martin (Romero) : 7/10
Wandafuru Raifu (Koreeda) : 7/10

Blood for Dracula (1974; rewatch) 4/5
Blade (1998) 3.5/5
Stalker (1979; rewatch) 5/5
Dunkirk (2017) 3.5./5
30 for 30: Mike and the Mad Dog (2017) 2/5
City of Pirates (1984) 1.5/5
Decker: Port of Call: Hawaii (2015) 4/5

Watched Cronos last night. It was...OK. (I bought the Criterion box of 3 Del Toro movies, having only previously seen The Devil's Backbone.)

man.... A Ghost Story did not go over well at the packed elderly matinee... I liked it though, pretty soul crushing though, idk if I was in the mood for that.

Anthony Lane went on about it so long and well enough that I feel like I've already seen it, as tends to happen all over The New Yorker these days. Robert, Tree of Life is later-Malicky as Hell, and I dug it as such, but you really should (a word I try to use as little as possible), fucking should start with his early peak, Badlands, also Days of Heaven.

And speaking of early Altman, That Cold Day In The Park (1969) is one that seemed twitchy but/and deserving of more concentration (or maybe less would have helped more) than I could could contribute during a zoned midnight matinee long ago---what the heck, it's got Sandy Dennis, Luana Anders, Laszlo Kovacs...

the unofficial remake is Bruce LaBruce's No Skin Off My Ass

"The 'High Sign'" (Keaton and Cline, 1921) 6/10
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Waititi, 2016) 6/10
My Fair Lady (Cukor, 1964) 7/10
The Boss Baby (Tom McGrath, 2017) 2/10
"Listen to Britain" (Jennings, 1942) 5/10
Dunkirk (Nolan, 2017) 5/10 (in theatre, digital print) land 6/10, water 5/10, air 2/10

Slack Bay (Dumont, 2016)
Scarred Hearts (Radu Jude, 2016) - will be top 2/3 of the year, totally works for me.
Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman, 1961)

how does the Bergman hold up? I saw Shame again with trepidation but it impressed me.

Lego Batman - this was mostly trash, frenetic and stupid

Well it was the first time I saw it and I loved it very much. Its a great play, for one, then you have the scene on the ship and the helicopter at the end - both are inspired. xp

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Waititi, 2016) 6/10

― Einstein, Kazanga, Sitar (abanana), Sunday, 30 July 2017 13:56 (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Gtfo

Dawson City: Frozen Time (7.5)

I saw this last night and thought it was gorgeous.

lots of good moments in Wilderpeople, but ultimately in service of father-son bonding dreck.

risk (poitras 2017) 5/10
au revoir les enfants (malle, 87) 9/10
the house (Andrew jay cohen 2017) 5/10
remember my name (Rudolph 78) 6/10
a kind of loving (Schlesinger '62) 9/10
the discovery (McDowell 2017) 5/10
domestic violence (wiseman '01) 8/10
hidden in America (martin bell '96) 7/10
youth (sorrentino 2015) 6.5/10