Last (x) movies you saw (II)

3 Faces (Panahi, 2018)
Ash is the Purest White (Zhang-Ke, 2019)

Loved the panahi

damn! I just got 5 minutes into Ash is the Purest White last night and my router that was streaming it to the tv went down and I was too tired to sort it out.

All the Colors of the Dark (Martino, 1972)- surprisingly, not my favorite of the two Polanski-esque cult-centered gialli I watched recently (neither beat out Perfume of the Lady in Black, my favorite, but I will always at least check out this kind of thing). It's beautiful, has an amazing Bruno Nicolai score, but screenwriter (of this and about 40% of all giallo movies ever) Ernesto Gastaldi with his disinterest in psychology and simultaneous obsession with rational plotting is exactly the wrong match for this kind of material.

Short Night of Glass Dolls (Lado, 1971)- this, though! It's unrelentingly fucking grim and, Rosemary's Baby stuff aside, is more in line with American paranoia thrillers of the 70s than gialli (the Prague setting is a big part of this).

*Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)- it halloween
OK fine; it's instructive to watch this again after seeing Black Christmas for the first time, a comparison that doesn't do Halloween too many favors, especially with Black Christmas's relatively naturalistic teen/young adult dialogue. But it's also easier to see how new and exciting and disturbing Michael Myers' onscreen presence is, especially in scenes early on where he's hiding behind shrubs or lurking in clotheslines; there's a reason he's credited as The Shape. Too bad the franchise completely shit the bed almost immediately!

The Butterfly Murders (Hark, 1979)- Tsui Hark's first film; it's a wuxia murder mystery with some really marvelous horror elements. This is an area I'm almost totally unfamiliar with, so it's a shame to see how little care has been taken in English-speaking territories with this film; the copy on Prime is cropped at the wrong aspect ratio, going green and has awful subtitles. On the plus side, at least it's on Prime...

*Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Petri, 1970)- Part of my Petri thing, which is now also turning into a Gian Maria Volonte thing. I would give a finger for a restored copy of Todo Modo right now. One of my favorite films.

Halloween II (Rosenthal/Carpenter, 1981)- Dogshit. Dean Cundey means it looks all right, Donald Pleasance (already in demented camp mode) and Jamie Lee Curtis (given nothing whatsoever to do) ensure some sense of continuity with the original; it does its best to try and retroactively make the original worse with its pointless twist, characters present for no reason other than to get got in inventive and stupid ways (and made unbearable so we don't have any reaction to their deaths) and Donald Pleasance's total inability to pronounce the word "Samhain"

*Theorem (Pasolini, 1968)- The Morricone score, Terence Stamp's extremely tight pants, Pasolini's total command of tone and pacing, it's grown on me a lot since the last time I saw this. Even kind of liked Ninetto Davoli this time, which is usually a hard sell for me.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)- Points for trying, unlike the last one. It's still bad but it's bad in interesting ways; Dan O'Herlihy is fun (and can pronounce "Samhain") and the credits sequence is glorious. Kind of interesting how plot elements show up in later Carpenter films (thinking specifically of They Live and In the Mouth of Madness here). The lead, whose name I do not care enough to look up, is a total charisma vacuum and has the heaviest Rowsdower vibe I have ever seen. I can't even make a "divorced dad energy" joke here because that is literally his entire deal. He's just the worst, though.

For a Few Dollars More (Leone, 1965)- First time for this one. Not as elegantly plotted as Fistful, but it didn't have Hammett and/or Kurosawa as a template. More/better Volonte, ludicrous grand guignol violence, and the most hilariously stacked lineup of villains (Klaus Kinski! Luigi Pistilli! Mario Brega, again!), but what mostly stuck with me was this jaw-dropping Morricone cue. It's still based on the same kind of fusion of folk melodies/instrumentation and electric distortion as Fistful (and most of his other Western scores) but with scoring techniques I would have associated more with horror movies of the time (not just that blaring church organ, either; there are some creepy glissandi I would have never expected from Morricone).

Just realized that makes me sound lukewarm on Theorem, which I absolutely am not, I think it's a masterpiece

April, all but one on a television

Please, Kill Mr. Kinski (Schmoeller 1999) [short, tipped off from this thread]
Cellular (Ellis, Cohen, Morgan 2004)
Logan's Run (Anderson, Goodman after Nolan and Johnson 1976 ) [DCP]
* Heathers (Lehmann, Waters 1989)
The Ten Commandments (DeMille, MacKenzie, Lasky Jr, Gariss, Frank 1956)
Sadie (Megan Griffiths 2018)
* Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh, Rebecca Blunt 2017)
Gilbert (Berkeley 2018)
Like Me (Mockler 2018)

*Circle of Deceit (1981, Schlondorff) 9/10
*Spite Marriage (1929, Sedgwick/Keaton) 8/10
Full of Life (1956, Quine) 8/10
The Mule (2018, Eastwood) 7/10
Fear City (1984, Ferrara) 4/10
*Macario (1960, Gavaldón) 8/10
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018, Jenkins) 6/10
*Pasolini (2014, Ferrara) 8/10
Cœur fidèle aka The Unfaithful Heart (1923, Epstein) 8/10
*The Addiction (1995, Ferrara) 7/10

Paisan (Rossellini, 1946) - 6/10
She Hate Me (Lee, 2004) - 6/10
Dressed to Kill (De Palma, 1980) - 9/10
Germany: Year Zero (Rossellini, 1948) - 6/10
Innocence Unprotected (Makavejev, 1968) - 5/10
Almayer’s Folly (Akerman, 2011) - 4/10
Capricious Summer (Menzel, 1968) - 7/10
Dishonored (Sternberg, 1931) - 10/10
A Film Like Any Other (Godard, 1968) - 5/10
Vladimir and Rosa (Godard & Gorin, 1971) - 5/10
Sweetie (Campion, 1989) - 4/10
In Which We Serve (Lean, 1942) - 7/10
The Mothman Prophecies (Pellington, 2002) - 6/10
Shanghai Express (Sternberg, 1932) - 10/10
Se7en (Fincher, 1995) - 7/10
Magnolia (Anderson, 1999) - 3/10
Underworld (Sternberg, 1927) - 8/10
Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965) - 10/10
Blonde Venus (Sternberg, 1932) - 9/10
The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946) - 9/10
The Scarlet Empress (Sternberg, 1934) - 8/10
The Overnight (Brice, 2015) - 8/10
The Devil is a Woman (Sternberg, 1935) - 8/10
The Player (Altman, 1992) - 10/10
The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1937) - 10/10
The Joke (Jireš, 1969) - 7/10
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940) - 6/10
The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky, 1986) - 7/10
The Quiet Man (Ford, 1952) - 8/10

The 51st State (2003) 4/10
The Love Witch (2016) 6/10
*Hot Fuzz (2007) 6/10
A Film With Me In It (2008) 6/10
*The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013) 8/10
Avengers: Endgame (2019) 5/10
*Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) 9/10
John Wick (2014) 7/10
Shampoo (1975) 7/10
Loveless (2017) 8/10

Documentaries

Prohibition (2011) 7/10
Rush : Beyond The Lighted Stage (2010) 6/10
The Stone Roses: Made of Stone (2013) 7/10

TV:

Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)

MUBI:

The Patriot Game (Arthur Maccaig, 1979)

Cinema:

Diamantno (Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, 2018)

Loved the panahi

― milkshake chuk (wins), Monday, 6 May 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agree, at first I thought that it went off the boil once the quest finds its resolution but actually a wonderful thing about it is how it feels like the camera hangs out with these people they went to visit, and how we listened to them and looked at them for no particular reason or benefit other than to be with them.

Ah fuck I missed the patriot game. I watched the image you missed at the film fest last year, did you catch that one?

Sadly I wasn't able to catch it at the cinema or MUBI. The Maccraig was really good, lots of footage that speaks for itself - and I loved the soundtrack as well.

The clips in the later film looked good

I need to sit myself in front of mubi more often, cinema has been a bit shit for me this year and all this good stuff just slowly drops off their now showing page unseen because it’s too easy for me just to illegally watch old twilight zone eps on cyb3rfl1x on my bezos stick

Lot in Sodom (Watson & Webber, 1933)
The Frozen North (Cline & Keaton, 1922)
A Modern Cinderella (Mack, 1932)
Gai Dimanche (Berr et Tati, 1935)
*Burning (Lee, 2018)
Sensation Hunters (Vidor, 1933)
Red-Haired Alibi (Cabanne, 1932)
The Image Book (Godard, 2018)

Aniara, the sci-fi existential crisis film, is worth missing.

Speaking of Mubi, I don't know if it's there in every country, but if people can see Madeline's Madeline, they really need to do so. One of my top three films from last year.

And yeah, Aniara isn't that good. The book is cool, though

Glad I skipped out on that for an open bar Fifth Element screening, then (yeah, ok, lateral move, but I love that dumbass movie and the venue)

The Last of Sheila (Ross, 1973)- a nasty, black-hearted treat. Highest recommendation

*John Wick (Stahelski & Leitch, 2014)- Liked this much more on second viewing (and I was already positively disposed); the soundtrack has not grown on me with the sole exception of the Kaleida song used to soundtrack the Red Circle setpiece, and I'm really hoping the subsequent films are a little less buttrock

*The Fifth Element (Besson, 1997)- JEAN-BAPTISTE

EMANUEL

ZORG

5/5 I will be taking no questions at this time

*The Abominable Dr. Phibes (Fuest, 1971)- the announcement of a Witchfinder General remake produced by Nicolas Winding Refn (please no) had me thinking about Vincent Price and camp this week; Phibes is almost deliriously camp (or kitsch, ok) film, especially its use of period music and Price's incredible throat acting skills, all that stone-faced jaw-gurning and gesticulating while his prerecorded voice drones on about NINE ETERNITIES IN DOOM, but it's also the first time I really paid attention to Basil Kirchin's score. I'm mostly familiar with his home electronic recordings thanks to Trunk's reissues; here he's doing fairly conventional film scoring but it's lush and sad and weirdly affecting.

*Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Martino, 1972)- maybe Martino's nastiest giallo? Though I haven't seen his poliziotteschi hybrid The Suspicious Death of a Minor yet. Also the first one I saw, and it's been interesting to return to it knowing it's basically cast with a Martino brothers repertory company (that, and seeing Luigi Pistilli in other roles since, like his breakthrough in For a Few Dollars More). Thick gothic atmosphere you don't really get from other Martinos, even All the Colors of the Dark, aided by atmospheric locations (the same villa as Elio Petri's A Quiet Place in the Country, if I recall correctly) and Bruno Nicolai's Dies Irae-referencing score. Which is a bit Goblin in places as well; it's Martino's most Argentoesque work, and a better film than Argento's own adaptation of "The Black Cat."

The Last of Sheila = murder mystery penned by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins (secretly an item around that time)

Yeah, I wasn't sure how familiar people would be with it (I have a sense of it as a cult movie but I don't really know anyone offline who cares so I'm often worried I'm overexplaining common knowledge). It's really bracingly amoral for a murder mystery, too- I texted my parents (big Agatha Christie fans) about halfway through to say "you might like this" and some 45 minutes later to say "WAIT NO DISREGARD"

apparently it grew out of a parlor game AP & SS participated in with their friends

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Wiene, 1920) 8/10
Bitter Victory (Ray, 1957) 9/10
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel, 1972) 7/10
High Life (Denis, 2018) 9/10
*In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950) 10/10
*The Aviator's Wife (Rohmer, 1981) 9/10
The Student of Prague (Galeen, 1926) 7/10
Passport to Pimlico (Cornelius, 1949) 6/10
John Wick: Chapter 2 (Stahelski, 2017) 4/10
That Obscure Object of Desire (Bunuel, 1977) 7/10

Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma, 1974) - 8/10
No Sad Songs for Me (Maté, 1950) - 5/10
Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (Fassbinder, 1972-73) - 10/10
Le Vent d’Est (Godard, Gorin, Martin; 1970) - 5/10
Poto and Cabengo (Gorin, 1980) - 9/10
Basic Training (Wiseman, 1971) - 9/10
Routine Pleasures (Gorin, 1986) - 8/10
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Altman, 1982) - 6/10
My Crasy Life (Gorin, 1992) - 9/10
*The Image Book (Godard, 2018) - 10/10

Bisbee '17 is a singular work of brilliance; highly highly recommended.

Conversely, I kinda thought it was mostly a pale copy of The Act of Killing and that kind of documentary

Act of Killing didn't resonate the same way with me. Go figure.

Shrugs all around then.

The Act of Killing is great on its own but is significantly bolstered by the existence of The Look of Silence

Definitely. And there's no such thing for Bisbee' 17, or most of the other documentaries based on people doing reconstructions.

Would be curious to hear of more “that kind of documentaries” ie films in which participants in/adjacent to an event recreate the moment

I'll get back to you on that, forksclovetofu, I have the book on 'Interventionist' documentary at home. Small book, written by a Danish guy, has the whole list.

Meanwhile:

Fog of War (Morris)
The Unknown Known (Morris)
Man on Wire (Marsh)
Hoop Dreams (James)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (Gelb)
Knock Down the House (Lears)
Padre Padrone (Taviani & Taviani)
The Night of the Shooting Stars (Taviani & Taviani)
Kaos (Taviani & Taviani)
Caesar Must Die (Taviani & Taviani)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Olmi)
Carmen (Rosi)
The Night Porter (Cavani)*
Suspiria (Argento)
Happy as Lazzaro (Rohrwacher)
Prototype (Williams)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan)*
Spring Fever (Lou Ye)
The Assassin (Hou)*
Kasaba (Ceylan)
Clouds of May (Ceylan)
Winter Sleep (Ceylan)*
The Wild Pear Tree (Ceylan)
The One and Only (Bier)
Love Is All You Need (Bier)
Crimson Peak (del Toro)
Babel (Iñárritu)*
Biutiful (Iñárritu)*
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Lee Jones)*
You and the Night (Gonzales)
Knife + Heart (Gonzales)
Ikiru (Kurosawa)
Sunset (Nemes)
The Mill of Good Luck (Iliu)
Burning (Lee)*
Pokémon Detective Picachu (Letterman)

Hua Yang De Nian Hua (short - Wong, 2000)
The Burden (short - von Bahr, 2017)
The Fourth Dimension (short - Painlevé, 1936)
Human Desire (Lang, 1954)
Nightfall (Tourneur, 1957)
Come On Children (King, 1972)
An Act of Love (short - Knox, 2018)
Les fiancés du pont Mac Donald (short - Varda, 1961)
I Knew Her Well (Pietrangeli, 1965)
The Fallen Idol (Reed, 1948)
Dying at Grace (King, 2003)
Here to Be Heard: The Story of the Slits (Badgley, 2018) - h/t VegemiteGrrl, found out from her this was on Amazon Prime

The American Friend (Wenders, 1977) - one of those European homages to noir and gangster movies that forgets to actually be a gangster movie. It looks beautiful, though, and Sam Fuller treats it like he's in one of his own movies for two scenes.

The Stuff (1985) 2/5
John Wick 3 - 3.5/5
* The Addiction (1995) 4/5
Carlito's Way (1993) 4/5
* Murder by Contract (1958) 3.5/5
Knock Down the House (2019) 3/5
My Name is Julia Ross (1945) 3.5/5
* King of New York (1990) 4/5
* California Split (1974) 4/5
* Ikarie XB-1 (1963) 3.5/5
The Seven-Ups (1973) 3/5
Jubal (1956) 2.5/5
Free Solo (2018) 3/5
Homecoming: a Film by Beyonce (2019) 4/5
* Life is Sweet (1990) 4/5
High Life (2018) 3.5/5
24 Frames (2017) 3.5/5
Guava Island (2019) 2.5/5
Black Panthers (1968) 4/5
* The Lineup (1958) 3.5/5
Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) 3/5

Various Bobby Bumps animated shorts (Hurd, 1916-21)
The King (Horne & Rogers, 1930)
*The Red Spectre (de Chomon, 1907)
La Chienne (Renoir, 1931)
The Big Chance (Herman, 1933)
The Souvenir (Hogg, 2019)
The Cameraman's Revenge (Starewicz, 1912)
The Baker's Wife (Pagnol. 1938)

criterion channel watches:
Nightfall (Tourneur, 1956) 7/10
The Burglar (Wendkos, 1957) 8/10
The Man Who Could Work Miracles (Mendes, 1936) 7/10
Three Cases of Murder (Eady, 1955) 5/10; chop out the second case and it would get a 7/10
Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945) 8/10
Mysterious Object at Noon (Weerasethakul, 2000) 7/10, unique and wonderful, but amateurishly filmed

*rewatch of Mr. Death (Morris, 1999) 9/10, rating unchanged, instigated by the I Don't Speak German podcast episode on it. It was interesting to learn that Leuchter is lying in the movie about how he got his execution machine jobs.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017, Dean) 6/10
Fruit of Paradise (1970, Chytilova) 5/10
The Thief of Paris (1967, Malle) 7/10
Calamity Jane (1953, Butler) 7/10
*The Funeral (1996, Ferrara) 9/10
*Going Places (1974, Blier) 6/10
Welcome to New York (2014, Ferrara) (European cut) 6/10
*The Wrong Box (1966, Forbes) 7/10
The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (2002, Varda) 6/10
*The Gleaners & I (2000, Varda) 8/10
*The Blackout (1997, Ferrara) 7/10
Poetic Justice (1993, Singleton) 6/10
*Ladybird Ladybird (1994, Loach) 9/10

American Gigolo finally clicked on my third viewing (1994 and 2005 were my first two). I can imagine John Travolta bringing pathos to the role, and it might've worked, but Gere's lacquered shallowness is just right -- boy, does he know how to move in those clothes and thus in character. A scene I'd forgotten about set in a leather bar has less leering from the director than Cruising.

Schrader never leers, Friedkin can't stop himself.

Schrader used to tourist in such places, he's said

*Little Shop of Horrors- sadly not the restored original ending, which I still haven't seen. I'm absolutely not an expert on movie musicals (I want to get there), but I'd love to know how much the claustrophobic stageyness of the exteriors was a conscious choice ("Somewhere That's Green," etc) vs the product of shooting at Pinewood for control over the visuals/budgetary reasons/etc. Always linked with the Burton Batmans in my mind for that reason; that and first seeing them around the same time.

The Death of Stalin- doesn't really have an ending or even a particularly thematically resonant not-an-ending, but up until then it's incredible. The accents are the showy thing (that immediately feels totally natural and obvious after about five minutes) but I'm more impressed by how much Iannucci et al get out of the actual conflicts of the period- the troika, the coup against Beria, etc- instead of relying solely on comic business (which is there, and extremely good; there's an extended bit with people kneeling at Stalin's side not realizing he's lying in a puddle of piss that's one of the funniest lowbrow gags I've ever seen).

The Raid- it's not the perfect action movie its reputation has been built up to in the years since its release but it's a really, really fucking good action movie. Makes me want to track down Merantau and even more so the documentary on pencak silat that kicked off Evans' whole project in the first place; I can't really find evidence of whether it was completed or not (sources say it was work for hire, so he may not be credited) but I've at least found *a* silat documentary on Youtube, so into the queue it goes.

Emanuelle in America- holy christ this movie is bonkers
The first Emanuelle/Emmanuelle film I've seen, directed and shot by Joe d'Amato/Aristide Massaccessi. Episodic softcore shenanigans (d'Amato loves bush)- with, except for the amazing pop art kitsch in Emanuelle (this is one of the knockoff films with Laura Gemser)'s apartment and studio, some of the worst, tackiest, most drab 70s interiors I've ever seen- until it gets to Venice and some hardcore inserts. There's a weird thriller sideline into snuff movies that have been faked with considerably/disturbingly more talent and enthusiasm than any of the non-hardcore sex scenes and a weirdly (not all that weirdly for 70s Italy) racist denouement. Oh, and a lady jacks off a horse, which is less shocking after going on a Borowczyk deep dive earlier this year but still leaves me wondering what the fuck was up with 70s porn audiences. Killer soundtrack though

the claustrophobic stageyness of the exteriors

Shot entirely on the soundstage... The early '80s stage version was of course among the unlikeliest of runaway off-Broadway hits, so Oz wanted to honor the artifice of that stagey look. It was an expensive film, budget around $25 million (when that was real money).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Shop_of_Horrors_(film)#Filming

Saw booksmart the other day, it’s fine. Didn’t laugh much. Baffled it didn’t make a zillion space dollars obv

xpost Oh definitely! And I didn't finish or even really start that parenthetical aside about "Somewhere That's Green"; I meant as opposed to that sequence (and the theatrical ending), where the flatness of the suburb backdrop functions along with the catalog of sad, shitty consumer products and etc.

I'll read up on it more- I'm low key obsessed with 80s movies that tried to convey the sense of a city entirely or mostly on sound stages (the Super Mario Bros. movie is another key title here)

well of course nearly all studio films did that in the '30s and '40s, til location shoots became the thing

Tolkien seemed to be lacking something.
Also seemed heavily cliched in some places
Had initially hoped for more from it.

Live & let Die
Bond in Harlem, New Orleans and Jamaica in the early 70s.
A tad racist, odd that the one new supporting cast member to return is the redneck sheriff. Also wondering why they cut the death of the CIA agent for whatever broadcast that was I watched
A bit cliched
& I prefer Connery to Moore.

Destroyer
quite harrowing and Nicole Kidman has looked healthier. She does in this film too I guess.
Quite good really.

From the trailer, Booksmart looked like Superbad with a dollop of Yas Queen feminism

re Booksmart: i would imagine so but the reviews suggested something more? May watch tonight.

the Dardenne Brothers' "The Kid With the Bike" is simultaneously on Hulu and Mubi and, like everything else I've ever seen by them, is a great opportunity for painful slice of life underacting and intense shifts in perspective and sympathies; totally worth a watch even if you know nothing about the director

i got as far as the annoyed handjob in Destroyer and found it too ludicrous to continue. I get that this is a role a thousand men have sleepwalked through too but those films were also stupid.