Last (x) movies you saw (II)

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)

Just watched Jessica Hausner's Lourdes (2009). It was kind of strange, a sweet, gentle story with an unexpectedly portentous quality. I loved it

now want to see Amour Fou and Little Joe

Amour Fou still one of the best of the decade.

The Thirteenth Chair (Browning, 1929)
*Shot in the Excitement (Miller, 1914)
Felix Goes West (Messmer, 1924)
Experimental Treatment of a Hemorrhage in a Dog (Painleve, 1930)
Charlotte et Son Jules (Godard, 1960)
Junkopia (Market et al, 1981)
The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (Lester, 1959)
Bucking Broadway (Ford, 1917)
The Man Who Fell to Earth (Roeg, 1976)

The Standoff At Sparrow Creek is one of the best and most surprising movies I’ve seen all year. Highly, highly recommended. May remind you of The Thing, Reservoir Dogs, or Glengarry Glen Ross, but it’s very much its own slow, patient thing. It’s on Hulu.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Capra, 1939) 7/10
*Risky Business (Brickman, 1983) 8/10
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin (Scorsese, 2019) 7/10
*Popeye (Altman, 1980) 6/10
Walk Softly, Stranger (Stevenson, 1950) 6/10
Born to Be Bad (Ray, 1950) 6/10
The Elephant Man (Lynch, 1980) 8/10
*Coraline (Selick, 2009) 7/10
Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (DeNicola and Mori,, 2012) 6/10
City for Conquest (Litvak, 1940) 7/10

*Accattone (1961, Pasolini) 9/10
Young at Heart (1954, Douglas) 6/10
*Swing Time (1936, Stevens) 8/10
Battle Cry (1955, Walsh) 5/10
Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979, Rosi) (TV) 8/10
The Crush (1967, Olmi) (TV) 8/10
A Bread Factory Part Two: Walk with Me a While (2018, Wang) 7/10
A Bread Factory Part One: For the Sake of Gold (2018, Wang) 8/10
Il Posto (1961, Olmi) 9/10
Kaili Blues (2015, Bi) 6/10

The Train (1964) 4.5/5
Tropicalia (2012) 2.5/5
Mickey One (1965) 3/5
* 20,000 Days on Earth (2014) 4/5
* Einstein's Brain (1994) 4/5
* Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) 4.5/5
Gaslight (1944) 4/5
* Payday (1972) 4/5
Domestic Violence (2001) 4.5/5
Solar Walk (2018) 2.5/5
Police Story 2 (1988) 3.5/5
Police Story (1985) 4/5
808 (2015) 2.5/5
* Do the Right Thing (1989) 5/5
Total Recall (1990) 4/5
* Gremlins 2: the New Batch (1990) 3.5/5
* A Brighter Summer Day (1991) 5/5
* Thunder Road (1958) 3/5
The Miami Showband Massacre (2019) 3/5

Fast Color comes highly recommended as a great YA sci-fi afrofuturism metaphor

Nenette and Boni (Denis, 1996) 7/10
*Neon Genesis Evangelion: End of Evangelion (Anno, 19970 8/10
History Lessons (Huillet, Straub, 1972) 6/10
Another Dawn (Bracho , 1943) 5/10
Jessica Forever (Poggi, Vinel, 2018) 7/10
*Beau Travail (Denis, 1999) 10/10
Semi-Auto Colors (Medina, 2010) 7/10
88:88 (Medina, 2015) 8/10
Idizwadidiz (Medina, 2017) 8/10
Our Time (Reygadas, 2018) 9/10
A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (Diaz, 2016) 8/10
Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (Rivette, 1971) - fuck idk

Well done on watching Diaz and Out 1 and staying alive to tell the tale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4hpgDMxkQ8

Perfect Bid (Wallis 2017 7
The End of Evangelion (Anno 1997) 7
The Stranger (Welles 1946) 3
Crawl (Aja 2019) 7
Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone (Anno 2007) 4
Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion (Carducci 1992) 6
Yesterday (Boyle 2019) 5
Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood (Tarantino 2019) 6
Dumb and Dumber To (the Farellys 2014) 6
The Wrecking Crew (Karlson 1968) 3
Behind the Curve (DJ Clark 2018) 5

Le Samourai (Melville, 1967)
*Groovie Movie (Jason, 1944)
Dragnet Girl (Ozu, 1933)
Sing, Sinner, Sing (Christie, 1933)
Poor Cinderella (Fleischer, 1934)
24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (Melville, 1946)
The Circus Queen Murder (Neill, 1933)
Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood (Tarantino, 2019)

*Alphaville (Godard, 1965) - 10/10
*Jackie Brown (Tarantino, 1997) - 9/10
The Ascent (Shepitko, 1977) - 5/10
I Was Born, But… (Ozu, 1932) - 6/10
Intolerance (Griffith, 1916) - 10/10
Judge Priest (Ford, 1934) - 7/10
*The Old Place (Godard, 2002) - 10/10
I’m Hungry, I’m Cold (Akerman, 1984) - 10/10
Save the Tiger (Avildsen, 1973) - 8/10
The Long Gray Line (Ford, 1955) - 8/10
*Vivre Sa Vie (Godard, 1962) - 9/10

The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941) - 8/10
To Have and Have Not (Hawks, 1944) - 8/10
*Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman, 1961) - 10/10
Juvenile Court (Wiseman, 1973) - 10/10
The Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi, 1952) - 8/10
She’s Gotta Have It (Lee, 1986) - 9/10
*Broken Embraces (Almodóvar, 2009) - 9/10
Apu Sansar (Ray, 1959) - 9/10

+ 2 Image Books

watched Peckilnpah's Ride the High Country for the first time in a long time. It really neatly bridges the gap between Anthony Mann-type westerns, moving into the territory of what Peckinpah would later accomplish. His camera movements really stand out here. The gun battles come at the end and are predictably more in line w/earlier westerns which is to say less stylized albeit extremely skillful, but the wedding sequence is a tense comedy of horrors that really shows Peckinpah's interest in darker territory. McCrea is really good and charming and tragic, Randolph Scott I guess always struck me as a stiff but here he's incredible as this charming but dangerous and somewhat duplicitous man (that's not much of a spoiler, his first scene gives a bit of it away). Mariette Hartley is incredible here.

The Hammond brothers are a pretty stellar bunch of villains.

Save the Tiger (Avildsen, 1973) - 8/10

I think the new Tarantino swipes from this. The scene in which Brad Pitt picks up a Manson girl hitchhiker recalls Jack Lemmon's similar experience with a young hitchhiker here. Similar themes in both films too, though Save the Tiger is much richer.

Death Walks at Midnight (Ercoli, 1972) 7/10
Midsommar (Aster, 2019) 8/10
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, 1968) 9/10
Spider-Man: Far From Home (Watts, 2019) 5/10
The Abominable Snowman (Guest, 1957) 7/10
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Fisher, 1959) 7/10
Scars of Dracula (Baker, 1970) 6/10
Moses and Aaron (Straub-Huillet, 1975) 9/10
The Dead Don't Die (Jarmusch, 2019) 5/10
Island of Terror (Fisher, 1966) 6/10
The Long Gray Line (Ford, 1955) 7/10
The Horror of Frankenstein (Sangster, 1970) 5/10
I Drink Your Blood (Durston, 1970) 7/10
The Last Run (Fleischer, 1971) 7/10
Maniac (Carreras, 1963) 5/10

I loved Save the Tiger as a teenager, and still found it very period-atmospheric last time I looked at it (maybe 10 years ago), and Lemmon's big "Don't sell me America" speech memorable (if a little...writerly). Hadn't thought about the Once Upon a Time connection.

Saw The Godfather and Chinatown recently with my older kid. She liked the former but, while appreciating what makes it good, did not ultimately enjoy the second one.

Save the Tiger (Avildsen, 1973) - 8/10

I think the new Tarantino swipes from this. The scene in which Brad Pitt picks up a Manson girl hitchhiker recalls Jack Lemmon's similar experience with a young hitchhiker here. Similar themes in both films too, though Save the Tiger is much richer.

― Josefa, Thursday, August 1, 2019 11:15 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Good call! I had some minor deja vu during this scene in the Tarantino and this is definitely what I was thinking of