Last (x) movies you saw (II)

The thing about Silver Lake is that I'm an obsessive Pynchon fan, so I thought I would like it, but it just bypasses every point of Pynchon in favor of having Andrew Garfield being goofy. There's no sense of history, of knowledge, of psychology really, it's just all jokes about pop culture. I also thought the aesthetic, while accomplished, was fatally impersonal, and I hated the soundtrack. So there. Plus, I'm writing about it for my blog on Cannes, and part of that blog is thinking about whether it should have been in competition or not, so I can't stop comparing it into Long Day's Journey Into Night as a pomo convoluted noir, and I seriously think choosing Silver Lake over Long Day should be a firing offence. And I don't even really like Long Day. But come on! That final shot! I did like It Follows and The Myth of the American Sleepover, so I'll just call it a misfire and hope Mitchell does something better next time.

Capernaum is quite good, though I also thought it was a bit simplemindedly miserablist. Where Do We Go Now? is really worth checking out, though it's a lot more uneven. Moving rumination on death and sorrow, but I also liked the musical number about hashish cookies.

I saw Synonyms at Berlin, and to me the main thing to get about it is that it's about a Jewish soldier who is really mad that the Jewish people have a country and a military and all that. The key dialogue to me was when his family pointed out he would never be good enough in French, and that it was a shame to shift languages, and he retorted that his grandfather had gone from Yiddish to Hebrew when he went to Israel. It's about wanting to not be strong anymore, to be a nomad, to be an underdog, the way I see it. It's funny, because I thought about it just yesterday while thinking about Peter Handke. It's kinda the same thing, Handke was Slovene, thought that was a romantic and underdoggy thing to be, and completely lost his mind when his fellow Slovenes wanted to be masters of Slovenia, instead of a powerless minority in Yugoslavia. If that makes sense?

hm i have thoughts on that Frederik and will write later but for the moment since we're talking It Follows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMxz6sU1FM0

El Camino 3/5
* Jackie Brown 4.5/5
* Halloween (1978) 4/5
* Witchfinder General (1968) 4/5
Mister America 3/5
Chopping Mall (1986) 1.5/5
The Exorcist III (1990) 3.5/5
La vie de Jesus (1997) 3.5/5
Joker 3/5
Viy (1967) 3.5/5
In the Mouth of Madness (1994) 4/5

Bi Gan's Kaili Blues is one of my favorite movies of the last several years, still curious about Long Day’s Journey Into Night. I chose not to watch it at the Embarcadero because they didn't have the capacity to show it in 3D, regret that now

I'd be really interested in how Long Day plays without 3D, the final shot must seem really weird without it. I'm pretty sure Kaili Blues is the better film, but after I saw Long Day a second time I grasped it a bit more, and while it doesn't really make sense or is that smart or insightful about anything, it's kinda hilarious that it exists. There's a scene where a character plays a video game that makes me laugh just thinking about it, whereas the first time I just got annoyed because it was another weird thing that came out of nowhere.

there's a very endearing dumbness to long day's journey...

Enjoyed your post about Silver Lake Frederik, but mostly fascinated by how radically different of a lens you saw it through. It seemed very arch and playfully aware of the games it was playing, so some of those criticisms don’t really land for me.

Also this is forever a movie I’m saying “It’s got problems, but it’s actually pretty cool in a way” about. I think it’s a really good LA movie.

Pain and Glory (Almodovar, 2019)
*Artistic Temper (Mack, 1932)
*Wild People (McCarey, 1932)
Men of the North (Roach, 1930)
Underworld U.S.A. (Fuller, 1961)
City That Never Sleeps (Auer, 1953)
The Crimson Kimono (Fuller, 1959)
Private Hell 36 (Siegel, 1954)
Murder by Contract (Lerner, 1958)
Deadline-U.S.A. (Brooks, 1952)
A Kiss Before Dying (Oswald, 1956)
The Burglar (Wendkos, 1957)
Woman on the Run (Foster, 1950)

They Live (1988, Carpenter) 8/10
Ginza Cosmetics (1951, Naruse) 8/10
Ningen Gari (1962, Matsuo) 7/10
Act of Violence (1949, Zinnemann) 8/10
What Happened To Rosa? (1920, Schertzinger) 6/10
*The Circus (1928, Chaplin) 9/10
Kansas City Confidential (1952, Karlson) 8/10
Ad Astra (2019, Gray) 8/10
*Gregory’s Girl (1981, Forsyth) 8/10
*The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981, Schumacher) 6/10
The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952, Ozu) 8/10
What Did the Lady Forget? (1937, Ozu) 7/10

Cinema

Third Man (Reed, 1949)
Le Franc (Mambety, 1994)
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (Mambety, 199)
Getting to Know the Big, Wide World (Muratova, 1978)

MUBI

Kika (Almodovar, 1993)
Plein Soleil (Clement, 1960)
Silvia Pietro (Rejtman, 1999)
Too Late to Die Young (Castillo, 2018)
How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal (Green, 2018)
Thursday till Sunday (Castillo, 2012)
Workers, Peasants (Straub/Huillet, 2001)

Mike Wallace Is Here (6.5)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (6.5)
Midsommar (6.0)
Mean Girls (6.5)
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (7.0)
L.I.E. (7.5)
Where’s My Roy Cohn (7.0)
The Hired Hand (7.5)
The Go-Getter (5.5)
A Serious Man (6.0)

Waited a full decade before going back to the last one.

A Woman Under The Influence 7/10
Portrait Of A Young Girl On Fire 8/10
Blood And Roses 7/10

Just got back from the “Surprise Film” that closed out the film festival, here’s what I managed to catch over the week:

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Sciamma, 2019)
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (Costin, 2019)
Brief Story from the Green Planet (Loza, 2019)
Singing Lovebirds (Makino, 1939)
Fragment of an Empire (Ermler, 1929)
Muse (Brady, 2019)
Docks of Hamburg (Waschneck, 1928)
Caméra D’Afrique (Boughedi, 1983)
7 Reasons to Run Away (From Society) (Soler, Quinto & Torras, 2019)
The Irishman (Scorsese, 2019)

Long-haul return flight means shitty movies galore! Actually they weren't all shit, although I only made it 20 mins into I Feel Pretty which lowers the crap count somewhat.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) 4/10
Edge of Tomorrow (2014) 5/10 (the extra point is for not being Battle: Los Angeles)
Yesterday (2019) 4/10
Stardust (2007) 7/10
Ossan's Love: Love or Dead (2019) 6/10
Diner (2019, directed by Mika Ninagawa who also did Sakuran) 5/10
Bento Harassment (2019) 5/10

They also had 8 1⁄2 available but it didn't seem a plane movie, nor did Annihilation

i couldn't get past the first fifteen minutes of wick 3, which was my first try at the series. just a really gleeful bloodthirstiness in the choreography that seemed downright mean and antihuman. And i'm all about bullet ballet and whatever but this was just dark and dank.

Les Biches (Chabrol, 1968) - 8/10
Effi Briest (Fassbinder, 1974) - 9/10
When Willie Comes Marching Home (Ford, 1950) - 8/10
Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (Becker, 1954) - 9/10
Nightcap (Chabrol, 2000) - 10/10
The Illustrated Man (Smight, 1969) - 6/10
*Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974) - 10/10
The Host (Boon, 2006) - 8/10
Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (Fassbinder, 1970) - 8/10
The Swindle (Chabrol, 1997) - 8/10

Whity (Fassbinder, 1971) - 8/10
Torment (Chabrol, 1994) - 9/10
Elevator to the Gallows (Malle, 1958) - 9/10
Les Bonnes Femmes (Chabrol, 1960) - 8/10
They Came Together (Wain, 2014) - 8/10
*His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940) - 9/10
Story of Women (Chabrol, 1988) - 10/10
Bastards (Denis, 2013) - 9/10
Le Trou (Becker, 1960) - 9/10
*Masculin Féminin (Godard, 1966) - 8/10
Scarface (Hawks, 1932) - 7/10
Paris Belongs to Us (Rivette, 1961) - 7/10
Under the Silver Lake (Mitchell, 2018) - 4/10

Hips, Hips, Hooray! (Sandrich, 1934)
Murders in the Zoo (Sutherland, 1933)
The Real McCoy (Doane, 1930)
The 9th Guest (Neill, 1934)
*Dante's Inferno (de Liguoro et al., 1911)
*Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922)
Parasite (Bong, 2019)
The Lighthouse (Eggers, 2019)

looking forward to seeing The Lighthouse and Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is one of the great films of all time imo

Cry of the City (Siodmak, 1948) 7/10
Night of the Demon (Tourneur, 1957) 5/10
*rewatched James and the Giant Peach (Selick, 1996) 7
Cat's Eye (Teague, 1985) 6
The Tomb of Ligeia (Corman, 1964) 3
The Southerners (Renoir, 1945) 9
The Believer's Heaven (the Ormonds, 1977) 5
I Bury the Living (Band, 1958) 7
Village of the Damned (Rilla, 1960) low 7
The Wasp Woman (Corman, 1959) 3
From Dusk Till Dawn (Rodriguez, 1996) 4
El Camino (Gilligan, 2019) 6

Under the Silver Lake (Mitchell, 2018) - 4/10

― flappy bird, 26. oktober 2019 05:38 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

It really isn't good :)

Dolemite Is My Name - 8/10 - Great fun. Snipes steals it.
Lilliom (Borzage) - 8/10
Greendale - 7/10
La Dentilliere - 8/10 (extra point for Huppert's performance)

Lilliom (Borzage) - 8/10

― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Monday, October 28, 2019 5:17 AM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You're being extraordinarily generous to Charles Farrell. The man is the dictionary illustration of "adorkable," but he's way out of his league as a playboy carnie.

Rather than continuing to be the only one who uses the 5-star system I'll try to switch it up this time.

The Lighthouse 8/10
The Beyond (1981) 4/10
Night Nurse (1931) 6/10
Robert Frost: a Lover's Quarrel with the World (1963) 4/10
Tales from the Hood (1995) 5/10
White Zombie (1932) 4/10
Parasite 8/10

xpost Ehhh I prefer Boyer's take in Lang's "Lilliom" ( an easy 9/10) but the elements meshed really well here for me and I didn't mind Farrell.

September + October in theaters

Criss Cross (Siodmak, 1949) - 8/10
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977) - 10/10
Angel Has Fallen (Waugh, 2019) - 7/10
Streetwise (Bell, 1984) - 9/10
The Goldfinch (Crowley, 2019) - 5/10
Official Secrets (Hood, 2019) - 6/10
*Putney Swope (Downey Sr., 1969) - 10/10
Ad Astra (Gray, 2019) - 8/10
Downton Abbey (Engler, 2019) - 5/10
Gattaca (Niccol, 1997) - 8/10
Joker (Phillips, 2019) - 7/10
Honeyland (Stefanov, Kotevska; 2019) - 8/10
Where’s My Roy Cohn? (Tyrnauer, 2019) - 7/10
Jexi (Lucas, Moore; 2019) - 5/10
A Bigger Splash (Hazan, 1974) - 9/10
Zombieland: Double Tap (Fleischer, 2019) - 7/10
Pain and Glory (Almodóvar, 2019) - 9/10
The Laundromat (Soderbergh, 2019) - 7/10
Parasite (Bong, 2019) - 9/10
Black and Blue (Taylor, 2019) - 6/10
The Lighthouse (Eggers, 2019) - 9/10
The Old Dark House (Whale, 1932) - 8/10

Old Dark House is such an awesome film. Glad you got to see Honeyland in theaters. You're bullish on Lighthouse, eh?

I was going to say I'm leaning 10/10 and would like to see it again. Really restrained and proper use of what could've been gimmicky cinematography (some of the lens used are from 100 years ago). it completely looks like a Dreyer movie or a Bergman movie on Färo. I was expecting a stationary, symmetrical movie, but there are some really dynamic and effective moves here. I think it's close to a masterpiece formally. everything about the silent-era look & equipment used on the movie is integrated with its story: the claustrophobia of the frame (it's really narrow, pre-Academy Ratio), the austerity punctuated by bursts of passion, the color white... I haven't even read Moby Dick but I want to just for the chapter that's just about the color white, so I can talk about the color of white with regard to The Lighthouse. the sound design is incredible, particularly the 'final touch' and the actual lighthouse. The Old Dark House was restored by Cohen in 4K and it looked great, it looked a lot like The Lighthouse, sound aside.

that's high praise! may try to see it in theaters if i can.

incidentally i'd love it if some of you film nerds stopped by the ILPLEX thread on 77 and maybe jumped on board?

The Lighthouse is indeed a great theatrical experience. If there's any element that's particularly Lynchian it's the sound design.

CinemAbility: The Art of Inclusion (Gold, 2018) 6/10
*The Last Metro (Truffaut, 1980) 6/10
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Ramsey, Rothman and Persichetti, 2018) 7/10
If Beale Street Could Talk (Jenkins, 2018) 8/10
*All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950) 7/10
*You Can Count On Me (Lonergan, 2000) 10/10
The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, 1935) 9/10
*Darkman (Raimi, 1990) 7/10
Stranger on the Third Floor (Ingster, 1940) 5/10
Faust (Murnau, 1926) 9/10

I bought a membership to Glasgow Film Theatre at the very end of August and since then have been seeing a few more films than previously (though a couple of these were watched elsewhere). It's been an Almodóvar focused couple of months, thanks to the GFT's mini-retrospective.

Pain And Glory (Pedro Almodóvar, 2019)
Bait (Mark Jenkin, 2019)
All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)
Talk To Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019)
Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)
Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, 2006)
The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodóvar, 2011)
Soldiers of Salamina (David Trueba, 2003)
Chained For Life (Aaron Schimberg, 2019)
Monos (Alejandro Landes, 2019)

October:

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (Carreras, 1964) 5/10
Mother's Day (Kaufman, 1980) 6/10
Mr Sardonicus (Castle, 1961) 6/10
The Day Shall Come (Morris, 2019) 4/10
Spasmo (Lenzi, 1974) 5/10
The Curse of the Werewolf (Fisher, 1961) 6/10
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (Gilligan, 2019) 7/10
Nightmare (Francis, 1964) 5/10
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Beresford, 1972) 5/10
Juliet of the Spirits (Fellini, 1965) 7/10
Dolemite is my Name (Brewer, 2019) 7/10
Joker (Phillips, 2019) 6/10
Monos (Landes, 2019) 8/10

Spasmo (Lenzi, 1974) 5/10

Haven't seen this but Morricone's soundtrack is next level

Definitely a case of great soundtrack, mediocre movie

Listening to this now and holy shit it's hitting every pleasure centre so good

Dr Phibes Rises Again (1972) 6/10
Hearts of Darkness (1991) 8/10
Memory (2019) 6/10
Son of Frankenstein (1939) 8/10
House (1977) 8/10
Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956) 6/10
Dolemite Is My Name (2019) 7/10
Dogman (2018) 6/10
The Blob (1958) 9/10
Do the Right Thing (1989) 7/10

The Blob (1958) 9/10

Saw this for the first time this Halloween season and hated it.

xpost Oh wow "Do The Right Thing" is *at least* an 8/10, no?

The Blob is a dumb drive-in film (and even though i may have last seen it on TV in the '70s, i'm p sure this judgment wd hold up)

re:Do The Right Thing - yeah I dunno, I never like it as much as I wish I did. I think this was my 3rd time seeing it since the 90s and it diminishes a bit for me each time. There are some performances that I really hate in it, the treatment of the female characters looks worse each time, and some of the stagier elements land with a heavier thud for me. I watched it with my partner who had never seen it and we had a great time talking about it, but I dunno if I need to see it again by myself.

Re: The Blob - saw it for the first time last year and it was way different than i expected... the weird stilted acting, slow pace, the empty streets, the beautiful nighttime lighting and primary colors, the way its padded out with character moments like the cop playing chess or Steve McQueen trying to talk his way out of a ticket, it almost feels like Aki Kaurismaki or something. The fact that it all takes place across one long night gives it a weird dreamlike quality, my partner compared it to a Stephen Millhauser story. I think I really, really like it a lot.

The beautiful crisp print & colors of the criterion dvd must help a lot with this, i doubt i would have the same reaction to it if it didnt look so visually singular imo. One of my favorite bits, which I dont know if this would come across on a small screen or bad print, is the famous shot when all the people are running out of the movie theater, you can see almost all of them are smiling and laughing, having a great old time getting to be in a real movie in their very own town.

Yeah, I'd much rather have been in that movie than have been watching it.

lol fair enough

The Farewell 8/10 - Really wonderful. One of the best recent American indie films I've seen: affecting, wonderfully written and performed.
*Ugetsu Monogatari 8/10
*The Image Book 9/10

Motherless Brooklyn isn't quite a dog, but it's a thoroughly unremarkable two and a half hours. Like so many novel adaptations, it works on paper but doesn't amount to much in the end. It's not a disaster like The Goldfinch, or faithful to a fault like If Beale Street Could Talk, but it's just... so middle of the road and merely competent. it's ambitious but ambition is not a virtue in itself.

Ad Astra (Gray, 2019)
The Turin Horse (Tarr, 2011)
J-Men Forever (Patterson, 1979)
History Is Made at Nigh (Borzage, 1937)
*A Matter of Life and Death (Powell & Pressburger, 1946)
Early Spring (Ozu, 1956)
Fire Over England (Howard, 1937)
*Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
Raw Deal (Mann, 1948)
The Beaning (short - McCoy, 2017)
*True Stories (Byrne, 1986)
Unrelated (Hogg, 2007)
Che - Part One (Soderbergh, 2008)
Invasaion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956)
El Camino (Gilligan, 2019)
Che - Part Two (Soderbergh, 2008)
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (Haskin, 1964)
Fractured (Anderson, 2019)
The Others (Amenábar, 2001)
High Life (Denis, 2018)
Fires on the Plain (Ichikawa, 1959)
Sorceror (Friedkin, 1977)
And Life Goes On (Kiarostami, 1992)
Through the Olive Trees (Kiarostami, 1994)

Soylent Green was great. Heston’s character is pretty amoral/desperate for a lot of it, blatantly stealing from crime scenes, partying with hookers, etc.
Don’t Breathe is a heist movie that takes a hard swerve in its final third. A little too long but still very solid; gets the job done.
John Carter of Mars was a lot more violent and gorier than I expected.

i agree w/ one eye open about the blob, it has a weird unique atmosphere that doesn't really feel like other drive-in/50s sci-fi movies. gorgeous colors, too.

Don't Breathe is so fucked up

In the tall grass: just avoid.