Last (x) movies you saw

nothing for Stalker?

I made note of that a few weeks ago...(--) basically means I'm baffled by something a lot of people revere, that a low rating would be meaningless and just draw attention to itself, and that I haven't abandoned all hope that one day I'll get it.

Or: I'm confident enough of my familiarity with Scorsese to give The Wolf of Wall Street a really low rating--where it stands in relation to his other films, how much I trust my initial reaction--but not with Stalker. As much as it might seem so, it's really not meant as a dodge.

I don't know if The Da Vinci Code was marketed as an action film, but if it was, I'm thinking that "I've got to get to a library, quick" must be the least promising invitation to watch an action film ever.

It was, and among the many baffling things about The Da Vinci Code are that anyone thought Tom Hanks was an action star, or that Ron Howard was an action filmmaker.

xp no i understand that completely, clemenza. i like Stalker but don't get why so many people rate it higher than Solaris. i'm not as into the fucked up grimy urban/apocalyptic environment of Stalker vs. lush transcendent heavenly afterlife glow of Solaris... feel the same way with Eraserhead vs. Mulholland Drive

(xpost) Howard actually began as an action director for Corman in the '70s. (Haven't seen those films, but they're supposed to be pretty good.) But yeah, he's ill-equipped for that now. The Da Vinci Code was ludicrous enough that it might have worked as Corman-like camp, but Howard seemed to take it all very seriously. And not that you could have made that film anyway with such a high-priced property.

Watched Scorpio last night; a semi-forgotten early 70s paranoid thriller with Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield (playing a Russian with ridiculous facial hair), and Alain Delon. A little long (115 minutes) but very well done.

Lancaster and Scofield liked working together, it seems.

wait i thought The Da Vinci Code was insanely camp?

psycho self-flagellating albino monk, low speed car chase in a Renault Clio, dinky little graphics explaining the puzzles to you, big macguffin had zero stakes, Hanks's hair etc etc

i mean i'd never watch it again it's boring as hell but still

If we're cataloguing the ludicrous details of The Da Vinci Code, I must quote Walter Chaw here:

Start in The Da Vinci Code with the mythical discipline of "symbology": a malapropism invented by idiots so as not to confuse their flock with real words like "semiotics" or "epistemology." It's like calling psychiatry "talk-about-it-ology." (Defenders of the text beware, because the thing you defend purports to be in love with the importance of language.) Our good Harvard professor Langdon (Tom Hanks, acting throughout like he's trying to pass a stone) is a professor of "Symbology," you see, and he opens The Da Vinci Code giving a Power Point lecture in Paris about how first "symbology" is the study of symbols (duh), and then--those who don't read (or drive, or walk around their town), prepare to be startled--how symbols are a form of language.

NV: It had lots of what I thought was accidental camp (e.g., the line I quoted above), but it was hard to be sure of intent, and hard to know if some of the overkill was bad acting or knowing sabotage by some bored actors (Paul Bettany especially). I thought you could detect the trace of a smirk on Hanks's face sometimes. I do think Howard tried to make an earnest, prestige film, though.

I do think Howard tried to make an earnest, prestige film, though.

You act like he was trying to make Silence and people came away going "This is goofy bullshit," hurting his feelings in the process. He adapted a ludicrous airport novel into a National Treasure-esque caper movie that just happened to have Jesus in it. No one involved was unaware of what they were making.

If that's what it was indeed meant to be--a high-spirited romp--then they wildly missed the mark.

(That goes for Stalker, too, if it was meant to be a high-spirited romp.)

This discussion is interesting in that I am now no longer sure whether The Da Vinci Code is Ron Howard's idea of entertainment, or his idea of art.

Odor in the Court (Holmes, 1934)
Is Marriage the Bunk? (McCarey, 1925)
No Father to Guide Him (McCarey, 1925)
Mum's the Word (McCarey, 1926)
Thundering Tenors (Horne, 1931)
Blackmail (Potter, 1939)
Compliments of the Season (Hurley, 1930)
Dudes (Spheeris, 1987)
Max Learns to Skate (Gasnier, 1907)
Max Is Stuck Up (Linder, 1910)
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Lubitsch & Stahl, 1927)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (McDonagh, 2017)
Falling For You (Hulbert & Stevenson, 1933)

Light is Calling (short - Morrison, 2004)
Porch (short - Morrison, 2006)
Dawson City: Frozen Time (Morrison, 2017)
The Highwater Trilogy (short - Morrison, 2006)
Who By Water (short - Morrison, 2007)
Re: Awakenings (short - Morrison, 2013)
Marjorie Prime (Almereyda, 2017)
More (Schroeder, 1969)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
The Small Back Room (Powell/Pressburger, 1949)
Secret Honor (Altman, 1984)

The Other Side of Hope (Kaurismäki, 2017) 8/10
Jane (Morgen, 2017) 7/10
The Disaster Artist (Franco, 2017) 5/10
Thelma (Trier, 2017) 5/10
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri(McDonagh, 2017) 4/10
The Darkest Hour (Wright, 2017) 3/10
Wonder Wheel (Allen, 2017) 3/10
Atomic Blonde (Leitch, 2017) 6/10
* Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017) 8/10
I, Tonya (Gillespie, 2017) 2/10
* Ariel (Kaurismäki, 1988) 8/10
Zabriskie Point (Antonioni, 1970) 5/10

*BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017, Campillo) 9/10
*The Passenger (1975, Antonioni) 9/10
*The Wind (1928, Sjostrom) 7/10
*Zabriskie Point (Antonioni, 1970) 8/10
The Enforcer (1951, Windust, Walsh) 7/10
Dark Habits (1983, Almodovar) 6/10
*La Cienaga (2001, Martel) 7/10
Central Park (1990, Wiseman) 7/10
The Other Side of Hope (Kaurismäki, 2017) 9/10
Cruising (1980, Friedkin) 4/10
The Florida Project (2017, Baker) 5/10

Platform (Jia)
24 City (Jia)
I Wish I Knew (Jia)
Mountains May Depart (Jia)
In the Electric Mist (Tavernier)
It’s Only the End of the World (Dolan)
Spectator Records - Up In Smoke (Schwarz-Nielsen, Schwarz-Nielsen, Andersen & Bro)
Born to Lose (Demant)
The Great European Cigarette Mystery (Rønde)
The Chinese Mayor (Zhou)
Machines (Jain)*
Martin H(ache) (Aristarain)
Inside Man (Lee)
Bad Day at Black Rock (Sturges)
Joe Kidd (Sturges)
Dr Strange (Derrickson)
Thor: Ragnarok (Waititi)
My Apprenticeship (Donskoy)
My Universities (Donskoy)
October (Eisenstein)*
Vampyr (Dreyer)*
The Square (Östlund)*
Winter Brothers (Palmason)
Spoor (Holland)
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (Lucas)*
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams)*
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Edwards)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson)
Neruda (Larrain)

Max au Convent (Linder, 1914)
Married to Order (Chase, 1920)
The Public Defender (Ruben, 1931)
Max Makes a Touch (Gasnier, 1910)
*Hogfather (Jean, 2006)
What Women Dream (von Bolvary, 1933)
The Naked Spur (Mann, 1953)
A Plantation Act (Roscoe, 1926)
The Shape of Water (del Toro, 2017)
*The Thin Man (Vsn Dyke, 1934)

Predestination, an Australian sci-fi movie that's part Looper, part Memento, and part Timecop. I can only assume that lead actress Sarah Snook wasn't nominated for major awards in 2015 is because of genre snobbery, because she's phenomenal in it. Ethan Hawke is really good, too.

Our Man Flint (Daniel Mann, 1966) 7/10
History is Made at Night (Borzage, 1937) 7/10 -- damn those violins
The Monster Squad (Fred Dekker, 1987) 5/10
Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017) 6/10
Moana (various, 2016) 6/10
Pink Flamingos (Waters, 1972) 6/10
Captain America: Civil War (Russo bros., 2016) 4/10
X-Men: Apocalypse (Singer, 2016) 3/10
Quatermass 2 (Guest, 1957) 4/10
Scrooged (Donner, 1988) 5/10 -- partially seen before
White Christmas (Curtiz, 1954) 3/10
Holiday Inn (Mark Sandrich, 1942) 2/10
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black, 2005) 7/10
*Elf (Favreau, 2003) 6/10 -- i enjoyed more than just the arctic sequence this time around. still, james caan's first appearance is a buzzkill, and the ending doesn't work.

you seem to hate Bing Crosby, at least w/out Bob Hope

yes. also blackface numbers.

do they both have em? WC is too late for that i suspect

a product of the time, i've seen dozens

only holiday inn. WC has a "minstrel" number with lots of jazz hands but no blackface.

Watched Baby Driver and Logan Lucky on the plane today. Will need to update the respective threads at some point soon

LL very 'clever' but disappointing

totally forgot about that one

Wonderstruck - 7/10
The Killing of a Sacred Deer - 0/10
Lady Bird - 9/10
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - 8/10
Murder on the Orient Express - 7/10
The Man Who Invented Christmas - 6/10
The Disaster Artist - 8/10
My Friend Dahmer - 7/10
Wonder Wheel - 2/10
Father Figures - 8/10
Downsizing - 7/10
Christmas Evil (1980) - 8/10
Darkest Hour - 6/10

You are too kind to Darkest Hour.

yeah you're right that shit was a 4/10 at best. i saw it today. the audience CLAPPED at the end?? wtf???

Supernova (2000) - This was really cool SciFi Channel-style pulp horror/sci fi with James Spader as Nick Vanzant leading a doomed space research team that has stumbled upon a weird alien glowing orb (treated as a major discovery - the first discovered sign of alien life) that emits distorted video effects. Angela Bassett has a cool turn as the doctor who receives the distress call that leads them astray and into the path of a psychotic and supernaturally powerful space outlaw, murderer and thief who is basically a lo budget version of the T-1000 complete with regenerating capabilities. Robert Forster (of the new Twin Peaks) plays the first captain and pilot who ends up a mutilated flesh casualty splattered on the inside of his hibernation chamber when they initiate a risky light speed wormhole sequence gone wrong. Fun and trashy with some cool horror scenes!

Highway to Hell (1992) - Rad early 90s pulp comedy horror, very much like Evil Dead or Dead Alive but with a heavy dose of Mad Max desert car chases and lots of cheesy visual Hell puns. There are several Beetlejuice-style scenes with things like Cleopatra playing cards against Adolph Hitler (played by Gilbert Gottfried). Kristy Swanson is the damsel in distress (her handcuffs are a chained pair of severed hands) and taken by Hellcop (played by C. J. Graham AKA Jason Vorhees) to Hell with her boyfriend, a hapless kid and his mangy but usefully scrappy dog, chasing them across a desert fantasyland. Lots of rad guest appearances here: Richard Farnsworth, Lita Ford, Ben Stiller, Jerry Stiller. I think Jerry Stiller gets shot in a cowboy saloon and Ben Stiller is some demonic biker who does a short comedy routine after the lead characters leave one of the many divebars they visit on their journey.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) - Vincent Price plays a weird faceless mummy organist who designed crazy ways to murder people based on the 10 Plagues of Egypt all while pining for his go go dancer goth queen and aided by his assistant Vulnavia. He lives in this crazy gothic mansion with tons of colored lights everywhere and rad surreal set design. What can you say? This is my shit. Like visiting the set of TV's Batman on Halloween. Vincent Price is the man and he has made so many awesome movies and this is one of the best. I have an undying love for 60s/70s Technicolor Goth. Romantic, colorful, dark, comedic, psychedelic, occult, it really has it all.

I won't be able to go to the movies again until 2018, so fyi re: this list I'm missing out on Call Me By Your Name, Antiporno, Phantom Thread, Happy End... anyway this is my top 10:

1. Personal Shopper
2. Get Out
3. Beach Rats
4. Long Strange Trip
5. Blade Runner 2049
6. War for the Planet of the Apes
7. Battle of the Sexes
8. Lady Bird
9. The Beguiled
10. Ingrid Goes West

MUBI:

Umberto D.(De Sica, 192)
Irma Vep (Assyas, 1996)

xmas films:

Calle Mayor (Bardem, 1956)
Shadow of Angels (Schmid, 1976)
L'Homme Atlantique (Duras, 1981)
The Graduation (Mungiu, 2016)
Niaye (Sembene, 1964)

Calle Mayor was a bit of a discovery, I'd be confident in arguing for it being a very great film from that time. It pretty much follows from I Vitelloni: bored casino boys playing about, being bored in a provincial town (it probably didn't need the professor character as the interpreter is the weakest bit). What's powerful is the how the story is twisted as a woman (at 35 already a 'spinster') being tricked into a marriage as a 'prank' by one of the bored boys (the proposal taking place in the square is a highlight), and the feeling of guilt that ensues as her happiness has no bounds (brilliantly conveyed by Betsy Blair, a US actress dubbed into Spanish, but she totally works). The feeling of everyone being trapped, and by the end, the escape to the city as a non-option, as there is no ultimate escape from the loneliness - all you can do is wait, and hope this changes. I watched it alongside Shadow of Angels, an adaptation of a Fassbinder play by Daniel Schmid. The dialogue is heavily stylized and its crying for a restore (this was a shagged out VHS, the compositions look interesting but deformed). Fassbinder plays a pimp (much of his team are in the cast), the story of a sex worker who is too beautiful...her clients are seemingly scared to have sex with her, so they pay to monologue @ her instead. It was accused of anti-semitism due to his treatment of a Jewish businessman but its hard to tell whether that's Fassbinder overdoing the provocation, as the story is opaque in its telling.

Having these two films alongside each other like that was instructive. You could say these women didn't wait, they took the train, are mixing with power and sex. The lack remains. Merry Christmas.

You are too kind to Darkest Hour.

And to Murder on the Orient Express. That film was shockingly bad, and also disturbing in how much was taken up with close ups of Kenneth Branagh's face.

yeah, i think a lot of these scores reflect my expectations going in. Darkest Hour was as bland as I expected, so that's a 5 or a 4. MOTOE was entertaining and better than i thought going in, not something i'd ever watch again, so that's like a 6.

at home last 1.5 months

Blue - 9/10
No More Excuses - 8/10
White - 7/10
Desert Hearts - 7/10
Red - 7/10
McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 5/10
Solaris - 10/10
Greenberg - 9/10
The Trouble With Harry - 7/10
Network - 7/10
City Lights - 9/10
Stalker - 9/10
Kiss Me Deadly - 8/10
Summer Interlude - 9/10
The Long Goodbye - 9/10
Pickpocket - 8/10
The Naked Kiss - 7/10
Summer with Monika - 9/10
To Catch a Thief - 5/10
Blow-Up - 4/10
The Killing - 8/10
Autumn Sonata - 9/10
Woman of the Year - 7/10
Lifeboat - 9/10
Magnificent Obsession - 7/10
High and Low - 10/10
Frenzy - 7/10
Bigger Than Life - 8/10
La Chambre - 10/10
Good Morning - 8/10
Night and Fog - 10/10
Chafed Elbows - 9/10
Safe - 10/10
Election - 10/10
They Live By Night - 8/10
Night Moves - 8/10
I Confess - 6/10
Ikiru - 9/10
Personal Shopper - 9/10
News from Home - 10/10

McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 5/10

Ouch!

Network - 7/10

Salt in the wound.

Wow, McCabe is all time.

Just saw the Big Sick. It was okay.

As much as some special-effect extravaganza, but for completely different reasons, you've got to see McCabe in a theatre.

Impressive tally of films.

Star Wars : TLJ - 7/10
Sans Mobile Apparent - 8/10
Killing Of A Sacred Deer - 6/10
Veronica - 6/10
Odds Against Tomorrow - 9/10
Bladerunner:2049 - 7/10 *
Le Cercle Rouge - 10/10
Jabberwocky - 5/10
aka Doc Pomus - 7/10
Cesar et Rosalie - 8/10
Classe Tous Risques - 8/10
The Ash Tree - 7/10
A Warning To The Curious - 8/10
The Stalls Of Barchester - 7/10
The Treasure of Abbott Thomas - 8/10

Just saw "Rat Film." Tries to be profound, mostly just pretentious.

was it your life story

As much as some special-effect extravaganza, but for completely different reasons, you've got to see McCabe in a theatre.

― clemenza, Wednesday, December 27, 2017 3:31 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

definitely will jump at the opportunity to see this in a theater, as with any altman. i love him but this one left me cold, 5 is harsh maybe but again my expectations were higher

Network is great but oh my god talk about overwritten. i laughed out loud at the "why is that every woman's first instinct when they want to hurt a man is to impugn his cocksmanship?" i mean, come on. not the movie's fault but it is responsible for aaron sorkin.

I liked Rat Film. as a local I thought it did the city justice, and the video essay construction worked for me. the bit at the end about the 'apocalypse' was forced or maybe rushed, but i dug it overall... felt sorta shaggy and perhaps didn't justify its running time, even though it was like 80 minutes. lots of unnecessary shots of Dan's rat music setup. felt like a behind the scenes digression.

saw Okja yesterday. thought it sucked real bad after the first third (basically after english speaking characters showed up)

The dialogue in Network is a hate crime.