Last (x) movies you saw

omg

Interstellar could have been a cool premise, once it got into the final third I was basically like

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Perhaps too harsh on Performance, I'd say a 6. Really impressive for a debut, but it's too muddled & the pacing is very sloppy. Roeg's talent as an editor is already evident here, and it's the best part of the movie. And what can I say, Bad Timing is one of my favorite movies - I understand why you & others might not like it. It just really works for me.

Interstellar managed to keep me gripped for nearly 3 hours despite the fact that it makes absolutely no sense (I loved reading the ILX thread on it after watching). The 5th dimensional infinity bookcase thing was such an incredible image, & I love time travel shit that goes beyond point a to point b. So despite all its flaws - an hour and a half of characters vomiting exposition, nonsensical decisions & physics, Nolan using an extremely convoluted narrative conceit to convey a very simple human emotion - it kept me hooked.

I'm not a fan of Terrence Malick. I find his films incredibly boring, daft, and aesthetically uninteresting. I hate when people describe his movies as "dreamlike" when they just mean "pretty." Too bad his golden hour style got copped by car commercials and epiphanycore bands in the last 15 years. I've seen all of his films aside from Days of Heaven, which I plan on seeing at a big theater next month. Regarding Badlands: I thought the gauzy emotional remove was ill suited for a murder spree. I just don't know what he's trying to say or do, or what others find compelling here.

and yes I liked The Emoji Movie

Night Moves on Blu-Ray. Looks fantastic. Hackman is amazing as always. I'd never seen Harris Yulin play a young (read: under 60) person, so that was interesting. Some great lines, too. "If Harry hears you call him Harry one more time, he's gonna make you eat that cat."

Flappy, I enjoy your contributions to this board, but you are also maybe the user that has the most bewilderingly off-the-mark takes on certain things.

Krisha (2015) 2.5/5
Targets (1968) 4/5. Was surprised at how little this felt like a first film, or like any other Bogdanovich I've seen (including Saint Jack)
Mon oncle (1958; rewatch) 5/5
Ten (2002) 3.5/5
The Lovers and the Despot (2016) 3/5
Teeth (2015) 2.5/5
Blade II (2002) 3.5/5
Walden (1969) 4/5

In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950) 9/10
Diabolique (Clouzot, 1955) 7/10
White Material (Denis, 2009) 7/10
Still Life (Zhangke, 2006) 7/10
Dong (Zhangke, 2006) 5/10
24 City (Zhangke, 2008) 8/10
The King of Comedy (Scorsese, 1982) 8/10
Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957) 10/10
Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946) 10/10
Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951) 8/10
The Bad Sleep Well (Kurosawa, 1960) 8/10
Mccabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971) 9/10
Spring in a Small Town (Mu, 1948) 9/10
Silent Running (Trumbull, 1972) 4/10
Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940) 7/10
The Killing (Kubrick, 1956) 7/10
* Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001) 8/10
L’Eclisse (Antonioni, 1962) 6/10

Flappy, I enjoy your contributions to this board, but you are also maybe the user that has the most bewilderingly off-the-mark takes on certain things.

― circa1916, Saturday, September 9, 2017 10:12 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha, thank you

MUBI watches:

Extraordinary Stories (Mariano Llianas, 2008) - the nearest I've seen a film spin a tale the way Pynchon might do so in a book.
Suddenly, Last Summer (Mankeiwicz, 1959) - first time I've really savoured Elizabeth Taylor im film.
The Truth (Clouzot, 1960) - the only time I've seen Bardot in a film that isn't arthouse as such.

The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams, 2017)

What did you think of The Human Surge? Only played here for a week & I missed it, looked really interesting.

Night Moves on Blu-Ray. Looks fantastic. Hackman is amazing as always. I'd never seen Harris Yulin play a young (read: under 60) person, so that was interesting. Some great lines, too. "If Harry hears you call him Harry one more time, he's gonna make you eat that cat."

― grawlix (unperson), Sunday, September 10, 2017 2:34 AM (sixteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

great movie, was just talking about it here

https://ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=92876

What did you think of The Human Surge? Only played here for a week & I missed it, looked really interesting.

― flappy bird, Sunday, 10 September 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Its interesting and its been a while -- should've written some notes straight after and didn't so the following may or may not be fair -- but my gut reaction was of some kind of take on globalisation that seems way past its sell by date as a thing to do and besides it didn't have anything fresh to say on the economics of it (people are exploited so what), or on (or lack of) intercontinental connection. I didn't see it on the cinema, only on MUBI and I would leave the possibility of it coming together were I to re-watch in a cinema.

Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965)
*Zodiac (Fincher, 2007)
This Is Spinal Tap (Reiner, 1984)
Empire of Passion (Oshima, 1978)
Bad Timing (Roeg, 1980)
Bottle Rocket (Anderson, 1996)
The Duellists (Scott, 1977)
You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (Kinoshita, 1955)
You Owe Me One (short - C. Cuarón, 2002)
*Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Lynch, 1992)
The Last Laugh (Murnau, 1924)

Wind River

Lot of good movies out this week that I want to see. This is one of them.

Charley Varrick. Bought a Japanese Blu-Ray, totally worth $47. Beautiful restoration. No extras at all, of course, unless Japanese subtitles (and optional dubbed dialogue) count. My third 70s Walter Matthau movie in as many weeks.

L'Armeé Des Ombres and Le Deuxieme Suffle - Melville retro at the BFI. Dude made four star movies not five but I'm quite susceptible to his brand of grit.
Hook - The set design is gorgeous and there's some fun stuff with the pirates, I can see how if you grew up on it you might think this is actually good. But it's one of the worst offenders re: Spielberg working through his latchkey kid background in film, the confluence of Spielberg and schmaltzmeister J.M. Barrie tough to digest, Julia Roberts is terrible and is it too soon to start thinking Robin Williams is insufferable again?
The Belle Of New York- Good dancing, good banter. Viewing enhanced by my gf's seething rage at the rubbish walking-on-air effects.
Did'ums Diddles The P'liceman, Tilly's Party and Milling The Militants - From a sufragette themed DVD the BFI put out. First one a delightfully chaotic short about a cross-dressing kid wreaking havoc, second an enjoyably ramshackle depiction of two unruly teen girls, last one a truly hateful piece of MRA bile circa 1913.
God's Comedy and The Spousals Of God - Monteiro is pretty much unknown outside Portugal these days, right? Would probably be hard to champion his relentlessly pervy stuff in the current zeitgeist, too. But man, dude knew how to use a camera: expert at framing and prolonged takes, The Spousals Of God is especially notable in this. Also expert at language, which might not translate of course. And funny! So many of the big sex-obsessed auteurs forget to be funny.

whitney: can I be me (broomfield & rudi dolezal, 2017) 3/10
battle for haditha (broomfield, 2007) 7/10
Dolores Claiborne (hackford, '95) 6/10
man on the moon (forman, '99) 6/10
good time (safdies 2017) 9/10
the girl on the train (tate taylor, 2016) 3/10
the killer elite (peckinpah, '75) 2/10
the other side (minervini, 2015) 5/10
il boom (de sica, '63) 4/10

I thought "Wind River" was exceptional for lots of reasons. I don't know anything about Taylor Sheridan personally or politically, but between this and "Hell of High Water" he's doing an amazing job of capturing a certain invisible section of America, one where Iraq vets return home overtrained and overarmed but underemployed or unemployable (this is more subtle and implicit) and there's always this perpetual (and more explicit) conflict between law enforcement (police etc.) and law enforcement ,where people struggling to right wrongs themselves that the system ignores. In this case, all the stuff about the reservation really works as a metaphor for America itself, a place where the weak are left to die and be forgotten.

Who's seen the villainess? I really enjoyed it, it's not perfect but I loved its setpieces more than any of the hyped action films of recent years

XP i thought it was great, and yes to all of that. A lot to unpack and it introduced things slowly and still managed to throw a few curveballs

Mistress America was far better than I was expecting. A modern screwball farce.

MUBI & chill:

Ostende (Laura Citarella, 2011)
Dog Lady (Laura Citarella & Veronica Llinas, 2015)
Damiana Kryygi (fernandez Moujan, 2015)
The Gold Bug (Alejo Moguillansky, Fia-Stina Sandlund, 2014)

Of the Argie nu-wave guff Dog Lady was the outstanding pick. Constantly sets up these expectations of the story and character to then pull the rug under you in this obscurely told story of a 'witch' woman living in shack-like conditions with her dogs at the outskirts of a town. The main actress doesn't speak a line and overall there are about two dozen lines of dialogue. Utterly mysterious with a concrete realism in its depiction of solitude.

City of Pirates (Ruiz, 1983)
We Won't Grow Old Together (Pialat, 1972)
My Sex Life...or How I got Into an Argument (Desplechin, 1996)

MUBI are also showing a few films by Pialat, Ruiz and Desplechin. Managed about half the Ruiz before falling asleep. Not sure if its my thing, like I get it and can watch the fuck out of it, just greases the wheels though. Pialat is much more like it and I'll watch the other one on there I haven't seen next week. The Desplechin reminds I should one day try and hunt and re-watch all those 90s French cinema flicks that embedded themselves in my memory of late-night watching on C4/BBC2 when I was 15 or so. My Sex Life... might have been shown, but at nearly three hours I wouldn't be able to stay up anyway. This is possibly modelled on La Mama et La Putin, except philosophy & politics are distilled down to books and people no one spends a second talking about (might have been 10 secs 'back in the day')...plenty of thinking and talking about relationships and break-ups and all that complicated business, and the more you talk the less it resolves...cor and everything! Timelines spliced to shit too, for added comfort.

I was hoping for a Ruiz guide after seeing his things pop up in MUBI.

I think there were a couple of decent write-ups on S&S after Ruiz's death that led me to hunt down a couple of things via torrents and now MUBI but I really like to see his work in the cinema. Unlike Bunuel or Jodorowsky there is a reluctance to program anything.

Love Torn in a Dream for instance

Wind River (Sheridan, 2017) 6/10
Logan Lucky (Soderbergh, 2017) 5/10
Paris Can Wait (Coppola, 2017) 3/10
Logan (Mangold, 2017) 4/10
The Errand Boy (Lewis, 1961) 7/10
The Magician (Bergman, 1958) 8/10
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Renoir, 1936) 7/10

(nose in air) The best writing on Pialat and Ruiz I've found so far is all in French.

Though Richard Brody has written some fine things on each of them.

It Came From Outer Space (1953)

i'd seen this before, in a theater in 3d, where the most impressive bit was when they had the telephone truck ladder sticking right out of the screen (!) but watching again after all these years it was really pretty awesome. main monsters are legit terrifying and the theremin soundtrack is all-time classic. apparently for the bubbly "monster's eye view" effect they actually blew a bubble around the camera while they shot, and this is why those shots only last a second or two. additionally it was fun to play spot the influences: one of the cops is wearing the full Indiana Jones costume, several creepy shots of telephone poles are nearly identical to shots in FWWM and the new Twin Peaks (the bit with the worker listening to the weird sounds coming over the lines felt v TP). would watch again in a heartbeat <3

I bought The Proud Princess because it was once voted the best Czech film ever and it's a fairy tale film. Becomes clear early on that it's a propaganda film about the joy of hard work, so I was ready to hate it but it's quite nice in places despite some of the messages. Though it's never convincing that the Prince feels compelled to go and change the Princess, even for this sort of film.

*The Portrait of a Lady (1996, Campion) 9/10
*Diary of a Chambermaid (1964, Bunuel) 10/10
*Farewell, My Lovely (1975, Richards) 7/10
The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean (1966, Compton) 6/10
The Oyster Princess (1919, Lubitsch) 9/10
Titicut Follies (1967, Wiseman) 9/10
Africa Screams (1949, Barton) 5/10
Nobody’s Watching (2017, Solomonoff) 7/10
Marjorie Prime (2017, Almereyda) 6/10
At War with the Army (1950, Walker) 6/10

Oh god, I just saw Titicut Follies as well. Amazing.

How was Marjorie Prime? Trailer was interesting

I thought it became a bit redundant/lost in the third act, but it's a generally well acted "filmed play."

I quite liked it Too, and it's better in memory.

KJB loathed it! he didn't pour his coffee on me or anything tho

we came up with "A.I. filtered through Interiors"

Geena Davis' current face is less mobile than it should be

"A.I. filtered through Interiors"

i must see this movie

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It Came From Outer Space (1953)

*Diary of a Chambermaid (1964, Bunuel) 10/10

wassa matter -- fascinated by Moreau's maid costume?

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nothin's the matter, Alfred, Luis & Carriere hit it outta the park first time

Michel Piccoli never did oafishly funny before or since, i don't think

Cock of the Air (Buckingham, 1932, in the Academy Film Archive restoration)
A Blonde for a Night (Hopper & Willis, 1928)
Getting Gertie's Garter (Hopper, 1927)
The Front Page (Milestone, 1931, the recently restored American cut)

I think I'm emotionally exhausted after so much fast-paced comedy.

Watched Beatriz At Dinner last night. Salma Hayek plays a masseuse/spiritual healer called to Connie Britton's house; when her car breaks down, she's invited to dinner. The guest of honor is John Lithgow, playing a crass real estate magnate. Mild awkwardness ensues. Had this been written by Michael Tolkin, it might have been something, but it's by Mike White, and directed by Miguel Arteta, so it's nothing—unfunny and incoherent. At least he makes the rich family's big house look nice, but White can't even make Hayek's interactions with the Spanish-speaking kitchen staff interesting.

I watched it last night too, turning it off with a similar reaction.

Mike White has written some good things tho this may not be one

Brad's Status is better.