Last (x) movies you saw (II)

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.

Maleficent. Mediocre.

as noted in the devoted thread: I saw the Irishman opening night, it was very good. the first two hours were so preordained, so much gangster fan service scripting, so much special effects and explosions that i did have the "well how is this different from a marvel movie" thought but the last 30 minutes really redeem the film and act as apologia for scorcese's big dick bad guy fantasy fuel. DeNiro is fine, Pacino is a restrained as he's likely to be for the rest of his career and Pesci is fucking amazing as the most menacing grampa ever. He'd be winning a best supporting actor Oscar as long as he did the press stuff and is friendly on camera which i suppose he won't do.

Greener Grass: AVOID AT ALL COSTS

agreed. cardinal sin: it's boring.

The Greene Murder Case (Tuttle, 1929)
Archipelago (Hogg, 2010)
Murder By the Clock (Sloman, 1931)
*The Phantom Carriage (Sjöström, 1921)
*Haxan (Christensen, 1922)
Forbidden Paradise (Lubitsch, 1924)
*Girl Shy (Newmeyer & Taylor, 1924)
Duck Soup (Guiol, 1927)
Liberty (McCarey, 1929)
*Wrong Again (McCarey, 1929)
*Two Tars (Parrott & McCarey, 1928)

xp Yes it is, and at 100 minutes, far too long for a comedy. I assumed the filmmakers were UCB alumni and yes they are. that is a poisonous organization. AWKWARDNESS IS NOT FUNNY IN AND OF ITSELF. I swear to god, I thought the Tim & Eric ripoffs would've stopped by now. Tom Goes to the Mayor premiered 15 years ago.

Criterion just debuted Julián Hernández's 2009 Raging Sun, Raging Sky. Yes?

100 minutes, far too long for a comedy.

Huh?

a comedy with the depth and range of an SNL skit? cut that shit down to the theatrical minimum

I finally got around to watching Trainspotting 2, it wasn't as pathetic as I expected. Definitely much better than El Camino, which was basically pointless.

Trainspotting 2 left me with questions though. Was there a reference to Shallow Grave? (And should I watch that again?) Also was Spud meant for kind of a stand-in for Danny Boyle? I don't really know anything about Boyle other than the fact he has made some good movies and some not-so-good movies.