Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Toy Story 4 (Cooley, 6/10)
Giant Little Ones (Behrman, 2019) 6/10
Ward 5B (2019) 7/10
The Souvenir (Hogg, 2019) 8/10
Dark Money (Reed, 2018) 8/10
* Fox and His Friends (Fassbinder, 1975) 8/10
Medea (Pasolini, 1970) 5/10
* Playtime (Tati, 1967) 9/10
* Le Samourai (Melville, 1967) 9/10
The Prisoner (1955, Glenville) 4/10

*Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam and Jones - 1975) 7/10
*Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Roach - 1997) 7
What Price Hollywood (Cukor, 1932) 8
The Lineup (Don Siegel, 1958) 7; terrible police sections based on a forgotten tv show
Rocketman (Fletcher, 2019) 7; better as jukebox musical than biopic
Teen Titans Go To the Movies (Michail and Horvath, 2018) 6
The Decline of Western Civilization (Spheeris, 1981) 8
The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (Spheeris, 1988) 8

I expected Den of Thieves to suck - it's 2 hours 20, it stars Gerard Butler and 50 Cent, and it seems like a made-for-basic-cable Heat knockoff. But it's actually a lot smarter and better written than that; as heist movies go, you could do a lot worse.

Medea (Pasolini, 1970) 5/10

I thought this film was fascinating and it was so visually beautiful

Pasolini is a recent discovery for me. I've seen 4 of his films now and they've all been fantastic

Heh -- I've had the opposite impression. I got Teorema and can't understand why he chose such portentous framing.

Medea (Pasolini, 1970) 5/10

I thought this film was fascinating and it was so visually beautiful

Wait- so 5/10 is a good rating??

Oh, wait never mind. Now I see that was a quote.

My favorite Pasolini is "Hawks and Sparrows" fwiw.

I loved The Hawks and the Sparrows. Medea has a quality similar to Oedipus Rex for me, but I think I like it more. I haven't seen Teorema yet

also loved Accattone and Mama Roma, I guess I've seen 5 of his films

may + june in theaters

Long Shot (Levine, 2019) - 8/10
Holiday (Cukor, 1938) - 7/10
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (Wolf, 2019) - 10/10
Other Music (Basu, Hatch-Miller; 2019) - 8/10
The Mountain (Alverson, 2018) - 4/10
Poms (Hayes, 2019) - 3/10
Amazing Grace (Pollack, Elliott; 2018) - 7/10
Rafiki (Kahiu, 2018) - 7/10
Pokémon Detective Pikachu (Letterman, 2019) - 8/10
Booksmart (Wilde, 2019) - 8/10
Non-Fiction (Assayas, 2018) - 6/10
I Am Cuba (Kalatozov, 1964) - 7/10
Rocketman (Fletcher, 2019) - 3/10
The Souvenir (Hogg, 2019) - 1/10
*The Virgin Spring (Bergman, 1960) - 10/10
The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (Ozu, 1952) - 8/10
Late Night (Ganatra, 2019) - 2/10
The Dead Don’t Die (Jarmusch, 2019) 6/10
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Talbot, 2019) - 6/10
Yesterday (Boyle, 2019) - 8/10

Flappy where'd you see the Other Music doc? Made by two good friends of mine. Really proud of them.

The Stage Hand (Langdon, 1933)
I'll Take Milk (Yates, 1946)
Tramway (Kieślowski, 1966)
Bought! (Mayo, 1931)
The Seahorse (Painleve, 1934)
The Marriage Circle (Lubitsch, 1924)
Over The Fence (Lloyd & MacDonald, 1917)
The Bluffer (Sennett, 1930)
American Aristocracy (Ingraham, 1916)

xp
Maryland Film Festival! as of a month and a half ago they were still looking for a distributor unfortunately, I wish them all the best.

I haven't seen the former but I refuse to believe anyone could enjoy Yesterday more than Holiday.

Cukor confounds me... every movie I've seen of his I've felt could've been better executed by another director, like McCarey, Hawks, Capra... most of his contemporaries... they are all so stiff and and distant, I always feel like he's out of step. tons of stuff I haven't seen but I'm talking about Little Women, Gaslight, The Actress, The Philadelphia Story, and Holiday.

xxpost I have a feeling they'll find one. Fingers crossed.

May/June:

Birds of Passage (Guerra/Gallego, 2018) 7/10
Lucky Jim (Boulting, 1957) 5/10
Brigadoon (Minnelli, 1954) 7/10
Dracula Prince of Darkness (Fisher, 1966) 7/10
Ash is Purest White (Jia, 2018) 8/10

The Stranglers of Bombay (Fisher, 1959) 6/10
The Velvet Vampire (Rothman, 1971) 7/10
Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (Speech, 1973) 7/10
Not Reconciled (Straub-Huillet, 1965) 8/10
Legend of the Werewolf (Francis, 1975) 6/10
The Andromeda Strain (Wise, 1971) 6/10
Terror by Night (Neill, 1946) 6/10
The Lovers! (Wise, 1973) 5/10
Joy Division (Gee, 2007) 7/10
Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times, or, Perhaps One Day Rome Will Allow Herself to Choose in Her Turn (Straub-Huillet, 1970) 7/10
The Mummy's Hand (Cabanne, 1940) 6/10
Teresa Venerdì (De Sica, 1941) 6/10
Fear in the Night (Sangster, 1972) 6/10
Apollo 11 (Miller, 2019) 7/10

In Fabric (2019) 5/10 - this was disappointing and easily the least of Strickland's films so far. Looks and feels great but the story is too flimsy, the comedy too broad. The portmanteau structure doesn't work with only two stories, makes it feel cobbled together after they ran out of money or whatever

Birds of passage (Gallego and Guerra 2018) 8/10
La collectionneuse (Rohmer 1967) 5/10
Through a glass darkly (Bergman 1961) 9/10
Hana-bi (Takeshi 1997) 8/10
A tale of winter (Rohmer 1992) 8/10
The straight story (Lynch 1999) 7/10
Love streams (Cassavetes 1984) 7/10
The territory (Ruiz 1981) 5/10
First man (Chazelle 2018) 6/10
X: the man with x-ray eyes (Corman 1963) 7/10
Journey to italy (Rossellini 1954) 9/10
Silent light (Reygadas 2007) 7/10
Blissfully yours (2002 Weerasethakul) 8/10
McCabe & mrs miller (Altman 1971) 9/10
*Amour fou (Hausner 2014) 8/10
The other side (Minervini 2015) 7/10
*Carrie (Depalma 1976) 8/10
Next of kin (Williams 1982) 7/10
Tropical malady (Weerasethakul 2004) 9/10
13 Tzameti (Babluani 2005) 3/10
Stray dogs (Tsai 2013) 8/10
Shadow of a doubt (Hitchcock 1943) 9/10
Paris is burning (Livingston 1990) 8/10
The koumiko mystery (Marker 1965) 7/10
Minding the gap (Bing 2018) 8/10
The decameron (Pasolini 1971) 7/10
Tag (Sion 2015) 6/10
The double life of veronique (Kieslowski 1991) 7/10
In fabric (Strickland 2019) 5/10

Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara, 1964) 10/10 - the most perfect bonding of image and music in all cinema (imo)
Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957) 9/10
The Decameron (Pasolini, 1971) 6/10 - probably had my fill of Pasolini bawdiness now
Paisa (Rossellini, 1946) 6/10 - 9/10 for the rooftop chase segment
Election (Payne, 1999) 7/10
Sunset (Nemes, 2018) 7/10 - do all his films end up with everything outside of close-up faces reduced to a de-focused blob?
Dirty Hearts (Amorim, 2011) 5/10 - overly-melodramatic telling of an interesting story I didn't know about (murderous tensions in post-war Brazil among the large Japanese ex-pat community)
High Life (Denis, 2018) 5/10 and that's generous

A Star is Born (Cooper, 2018) 5/10
The River (Tsai, 1997) 9/10
Keep it for Yourself (Denis, 1991) 7/10
Vive L'Amour (Tsai, 1994) 10/10
A Tiny Place that is Hard to Touch (Silver, 2019) 6/10
Shin Godzilla (Anno, 2016) 8/10
Three Times (Hou, 2005) 8/10
Minding The Gap (Liu, 2018) 8/10

The Queen (1967) - Now in re-release; totally worth a watch and fascinating. Camera is occasionally lascivious and it can be uncomfortable watching some of the participants panic when they're being filmed in straight guy drag but a vital document made all the better by it's lack of explicit message and narration.

Little - I feel like I thought I would watch anything with Issa Rae in it, but not this.

Mission Impossible: Fallout - I think they thought I was meant to care about this or have any memory of prior episodes and, as neither applied, I mostly found this to be slapstick and more than occasionally stupid. When does Tom Cruise get to start doing old guy movies? Soon?

Too long a list, covering a too long period, but I waited until I'm going on vacation. No film for me for several weeks now :)

Kino-Pravda 1-23 (Vertov)
Mother (Pudovkin)
The End of St Petersburg (Pudovkin)
Little Vera (Pichul)
The Needle (Nugmanov)
Assa (Solovyov)
Boris Godunov (Zulawski)
Francofonia (Sokurov)
A Gentle Creature (Loznitsa)
The Major (Bykov)
The Fool (Bykov)
Yuri’s Day (Serebrennikov)
Betrayal (Serebrennikov)
The Student (Serebrennikov)
Leto (Serebrennikov)
See How They Fall (Audiard)
A Self Made Hero (Audiard)*
A Prophet (Audiard)*
Rust & Bone (Audiard)*
Dheepan (Audiard)
The Sisters Brothers (Audiard)
A Woman’s Life (Brizé)
At War (Brizé)
The Mischief Makers (Truffaut)
The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
Jules et Jim (Truffaut)
Fahrenheit 451 (Truffaut)
Day for Night (Truffaut)
Round Midnight (Tavernier)
Trans-Europ-Express (Robbe-Grillet)
The Ceremony (Mannheimer)
The Raft (Lindeen)
Together (Moodysson)
Lilja 4-ever (Moodysson)
The Guitar Mongoloid (Östlund)
Involuntary (Östlund)
The Square (Östlund)*
Bombay Talkies (Kashyap, Akhtar, Banerjee & Johar)
Lust Stories (Kashyap, Akhtar, Banerjee & Johar)
The Human Condition: No Greater Love (Kobayashi)
The Human Condition: Road to Eternity (Kobayashi)
The Human Condition: A Soldier’s Prayer (Kobayashi)
Shoplifters (Kore-eda)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell & Pressburger)
A Canterbury Tale (Powell & Pressburger)
The Tales of Hoffmann (Powell & Pressburger)
Booksmart (Wilde)
Pripyat (Geyrhalter)
Abendland (Geyrhalter)*

The Human Condition was a 35mm marathon screening. That was a good saturday. Though it's really a stone cold bummer, and the first part is by far the best.

Witness for the Prosecution (Wilder, 1957) - 7/10
Our Little Sister (Kore-eda, 2015) - 8/10
*The Image Book (Godard, 2018) - 10/10
Hereditary (Aster, 2018) - 8/10
First Name: Carmen (Godard, 1983) - 5/10
Changer d’Image (Godard, 1982) - 9/10
The Flame of New Orleans (Clair, 1941) - 8/10
Détective (Godard, 1985) - 4/10
Golden Earrings (Leisen, 1947) - 6/10
Zama (Martel, 2017) - 5/10
Mogambo (Ford, 1953) - 8/10
Cold Water (Assayas, 1994) - 7/10

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who was unimpressed by Zama

Jubal (Daves, 1956)
*Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (Scorsese 2019)
*Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Mitchell, 2001)
Craig's Wife (Arzner, 1936)
Experiment in Terror (Edwards, 1962)
Drive a Crooked Road (Quine, 1954)
Swing Time (Stevens, 1936)
La vie de Jésus (Dumont, 1997)
*Time Bandits (Gilliam, 1981)
Cold Water (Assayas, 1994)
Dreams (Kurosawa, 1990)

The Smoking Out of Bella Butts (Baker, 1915)
Little Geezer (Huff, 1932)
Fandango (Lane, 1928)
The Light in the Dark (Brown, 1922)
The Giant Gila Monster (Kellogg, 1959)
Midsommar (Aster (2019)

Swinging Safari (Elliott 2018)
The Infinite Man (Sullivan 2014) 📺
Doubles vies [Non-Fiction] (Assayas 2019)
One, Two, Three (Wilder, Diamond 1961)
Memory: The Origins of Alien (Philippe 2019)
Terror Nullius (Soda_Jerk 2018)
* BMX Bandits (Trenchard-Smith, Hagg, Edgeworth 1983) 📺
Complex a/k/a Nightmare At Shadow Woods a/k/a Blood Rage a/k/a Slasher (Grissmer, Rubin 1983) 📺
Always Be My Maybe (Nahnatchka Khan, Ali Wong, Randall Park, Michelle Buteau, Keanu Reeves 2019) 📺
Un couteau dans le cœur [Knife+Heart] (Gonzalez, Mangione, 83 2018) 📽️ 35mm
mid90s (Hill 2018) 📺
* Hunt For The Wilderpeople (Waititi, Crump 2016) 📺
* The Big Lebowski (Coen & Coen 1998 )
Relaxer (Potrykus 2019)
Suddenly (Allen, Sale 1954) 📺
The Hateful 8 (12" disco funk get up get down go to the lavatory mix) (Tarantino 2015) 📺
Pee Wee's Big Adventure (Burton, Hartman, Reubens, Varhol 1985)
The Sapphires (Blair, Thompson, Briggs 2012) 📺

the bulb died at the last reel of Knife + Heart, so after five minutes they finished it off from a digital copy. this was either the only print in the US, or possibly in the world?

also I'd seen the 70mm version of Hateful 8 on release, so 5/7ths of an asterisk

Lol I remember going to the cinema to watch BMX Bandits. Nicole Kidman!

This was my first viewing since the cinema, too. At the time I was terrified when they went down the slides at WaterWorks bcz of neighbourhood mum claims that bad kids wedged razorblades into the joins.

The Plagiarists (2019, Parlow) 7/10
*Teorema (1968, Pasolini) 6/10
The Chambermaid (2018, Aviles) 8/10
Bonnie Scotland (1935, Horne) 7/10
*Do the Right Thing (1989, Lee) 10/10
*The Devil’s Brother aka Fra Diavolo (1933, Roach, Rogers) 7/10
American Gigolo (1980, Schrader) 5/10
*Cold Water (1994, Assayas) 8/10
True Heart Susie (1919, Griffith) 8/10
Desert Fury (1947, Allen) 8/10
A Virus Knows No Morals (1986, von Praunheim) 7/10
*Funny Face (1957, Donen) 8/10

Too bad about the end of Knife + Heart, would have loved to see that on celluloid. One of the more beautiful and melancholic endings I remember seeing recently.

The Winning Season (5.5)
Booksmart (6.0)
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (5.0)
Entre la mer et l'eau douce (6.0)
Geneviève (7.0)
Insomnia (7.5)
True Confessions (7.0)
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (7.0)
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (6.0)
Amélie (5.0)

Not that I was exactly with it beforehand, but the last half-hour of Amélie felt especially interminable.

halfway through the year, I can honestly volunteer three bird movies for my top fifteen films: Birds of Passage, For the Birds and Bird of Prey

The Angry Birds Movie 2 out next month so you’re pretty much guaranteed a fourth

no emoji, no credibility

Whoa, for real??

The Mysterious Island (Hubbard, goat-glanding footage by Christensen and Tourneur, 1929)
A Ready-Made Maid (Hotaling, 1916)
Wholesailing Along (Boasberg, 1936)
The Informer (Ford, 1935)
Use Your Imagination (Mack, 1933)
Killer's Kiss (Kubrick, 1955)
Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957)
The Killing (Kubrick, 1956)
Pinched (Lloyd & Pratt, 1917)
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)
*Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018)
The Grocery Clerk (Semon, 1919)

Hélas pour moi (Godard, 1993) - 5/10
World on a Wire (Fassbinder, 1973) - 9/10
Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (Kurosawa, 1990) - 7/10
Heaven Can Wait (Lubitsch, 1943) - 10/10
Return of the Prodigal Son (Schorm, 1967) - 5/10
3 Bad Men (Ford, 1926) - 9/10
Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955) - 7/10
*George Washington (Green, 2000) - 8/10
*Close-Up (Kiarostami, 1990) - 9/10
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston, 1948) - 9/10
Gosford Park (Altman, 2001) - 9/10
Aparajito (Ray, 1956) - 8/10
*Origins of the 21st Century (Godard, 2000) - 9/10
*Je Vous Salue, Sarajevo (Godard, 1993) - 9/10
Black Sun (Kurahara, 1964) - 6/10
How Green Was My Valley (Ford, 1941) - 9/10
Thirst for Love (Kurahara, 1967) - 5/10
*The Kid (Chaplin, 1921) - 10/10

george washington got me so excited about green, what a weird career that guy has had

right? and I hadn't seen GW in a decade or so and it wasn't as good as I remember

i've avoided rewatching for the past decade for exactly the fear that'd be the case

Hey sic, how was Crystal Swan?

It’s aight. Significantly different feel between the two halves, which is a deliberate contrast, but it means that the building comedy & tension in the city-set first section dissipate entirely for the small-town-set last hour, and pretty much every plot element from the start gets left behind. (The latter half has different comedy & tension, but you’re starting from scratch.) Performances are good & the whole thing is plenty entertaining / admirable enough for a TV watch, if your local TV plays subtitled Belarusian films on a Saturday night, as Australia does.

Not enough was made of two major characters’ ideological dispute over techno vs house / rave music imo, but the same goes for most movies.

MUBI:

Nenette et Boni (Denis, 1996)
History Lessons (Straub/Huillet, 1972)
Moses and Aron (Straub/Huillet, 1975)

Cinema:

High Life (Denis, 2018) - not sure what to think of it, especially since its nearly two weeks since I watched it. Its so unfamiliar territory for her and us too (auteur theory sucks). I like that she went to that place but I am not sure how things fit in at all. Some SF tropes were used, but to what effect?

It’s aight. Significantly different feel between the two halves, which is a deliberate contrast, but it means that the building comedy & tension in the city-set first section dissipate entirely for the small-town-set last hour, and pretty much every plot element from the start gets left behind. (The latter half has different comedy & tension, but you’re starting from scratch.) Performances are good & the whole thing is plenty entertaining / admirable enough for a TV watch, if your local TV plays subtitled Belarusian films on a Saturday night, as Australia does.

― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Monday, July 15, 2019 5:53 AM (yesterday)

Not enough was made of two major characters’ ideological dispute over techno vs house / rave music imo, but the same goes for most movies.

― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Monday, July 15, 2019 5:56 AM (yesterday)

Ah, good to know - prob won't be playing on TV in NZ; I'm taking some time off to travel up to Auckland from the back of beyond to catch a few days of the intl film fest, and trying to figure out what's worth seeing around the Chinese films & Varda retrospective stuff I'm set on. Speaking of techno vs house etc, anyone seen Brian Welsh's Beats? 1994-set Scottish film w/teens attempting to attend an illegal rave. & on a Japanese front, anyone seen Ujicha's Violence Voyager or Nagahisa Makoto's We Are Little Zombies?

Hereditary (Aster, 2018)
The Girl on a Motorcycle (Cardiff, 1968)
T-Men (Mann, 1947)
Won't You Be My Neighbor? (Neville, 2018)
The Hitch-hiker (Lupino, 1953)
Paddington 2 (King, 2018)
The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (short - Lester, 1959)
Sylvia Scarlett (Cukor, 1935)
Midsommar (Aster, 2019)
*Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
Babylon (Rosso, 1980)
Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940)