Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Hmmmm....Footlight Parade is my all-time favorite movie period. The Scarlet Empress is a fever dream of sex, violence, and grotesqueness; anyone who has not seen it should do so IMMEDIATELY. Try to watch Kongo as a double-feature with West of Zanzibar (1928), a silent version (starring Lon Chaney) of the play on which Kongo was based. And if you haven't seen any of Erich von Stroheim's films, do so (if only as serious exercises in wish fulfillment).

okay! gonna do the von sternberg and Kongo shortly.

December:

The Irishman (Scorsese, 2019) 8/10
The Scalphunters (Pollack, 1968) 6/10
Face to Face (Sollima, 1967) 7/10
The Vikings (Fleischer, 1958) 8/10 - a surprisingly beautiful-looking film - Jack Cardiff!
The Gunfighter (King, 1950) 8/10
Minnie and Moskowitz (Cassavetes, 1971) 8/10
Shane (Stevens, 1953) 8/10
The Beyond (Fulci, 1981) 8/10
The Perfume of the Lady in Black (Barilli, 1974) 8/10
Two Rode Together (Ford, 1961) 7/10
What Have You Done to Solange? (Dallamano, 1972) 7/10
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Abrams, 2019) 5/10
Support Your Local Sheriff (Kennedy, 1969) 7/10
Marriage Story (Baumbach, 2019) 7/10
Stranger on Horseback (Tourneur, 1955) 7/10

November + December in theaters

Motherless Brooklyn (Norton, 2019) - 5/10
Greener Grass (DeBoer, Luebbe; 2019) - 3/10
The Baker’s Wife (Pagnol, 1938) - 7/10
Jojo Rabbit (2019, Waititi) - 3/10
The Report (Burns, 2019) - 6/10
Frankie (Sachs, 2019) - 2/10
The Irishman (Scorsese, 2019) - 8/10
Knives Out (Johnson, 2019) - 8/10
Honey Boy (Har’el, 2019) - 7/10
Dreams (Bergman, 1955) - 9/10
Dark Waters (Haynes, 2019) - 5/10
Marriage Story (Baumbach, 2019) - 4/10
The Devil’s Eye (Bergman, 1960) - 8/10
Richard Jewell (Eastwood, 2019) - 5/10
Bombshell (Roach, 2019) - 6/10
Cats (Hooper, 2019) - 2/10
Little Women (Gerwig, 2019) - 7/10
Uncut Gems (Safdie Brothers, 2019) - 9/10
American Dharma (Morris, 2018) - 6/10
After the Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1936) - 8/10

that last one was the only movie I saw on celluloid in 2019, unfortunately - there were hardly any to see

saw five on film: Once Upon...Hollywood and Knife + Heart in new release (the latter either the only print in America or the only print in the world); Witchfinder General as rep; and The (first) Thin Man and Hitchcock's The Wrong Man in museum screenings.

i think you liked greener grass more than i did flappy.

Double feature for Jan 1 was a rewatch of 'Spirited Away' in theaters on 35mm (totally holds up, one of the great modern fairy tales with outrageously iconic character/set design) and the documentary 'Jay Myself' at home (enjoyable portrait of a fast dying variety of NY eccentric genius artist and his ridiculous home, great visuals and mouthwatering realty)

Macho Dancer (1988, Brocka) 5/10
*"10" (1979, Edwards) 8/10
*Husbands (1970, Cassavetes) 7/10
Phffft! (1954, Robson) 8/10
*Frankenstein (1931, Whale) 8/10
*The Irishman (2019, Scorsese) 8/10
*Going My Way (1944, McCarey) 7/10
Dolemite Is My Name (2019, Brewer) 8/10
Dolemite (1975, Martin) 5/10
A Hidden Life (2019, Malick) 7/10
The Farewell (2019, Wang) 6/10
*Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Penn) 9/10

Back to back Ghibli in theaters: Porco Rosso (the dub unfortunately, which badly hamstrings this... Michael Keaton has the perfect voice for it but is mailing in his performance and the Disney English script is unnecessarily ham-fisted and sexist throughout) and The Wind Is Rising (first time in theaters; definite top five, maybe top three for the studio)

They Might Be Giants (Harvey, Goldman 1971)
Black Christmas (Sophia Takal, April Wolfe 2019) 🎅 [DCP]
* The Usual Suspects (S. Criminal, C. McQuarrie 1995)
Death On The Nile (Guillermin, Shaffer, after Christie 1978)
* Knives Out (w/ in-theater audio commentary) (Johnson 2019) [DCP]
* The Long Kiss Goodnight (Harlin, Black 1996) 🎅
Anna And The Apocalypse (McPhail, McDonald, McHenry 2018) 🎅
Halloween (Green, Fradley, McBride 2018)
Long Shot (Jonathan Levine, Dan Sterling, Liz Hannah 2019)
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Gilliam, Grisoni 2019)
Comfort and Joy (Forsyth 1984) 🎅
* Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (McQuarrie 2015)
* Meet John Doe (Capra, Riskin, Presnell, Connell 1941) 🎅
An Exercise In Fatality (Kowalski, Cohen, Fischer 1974)
* The Ref (Ted Demme, Richard LaGravenese, Marie Weiss 1994) 🎅
Cats (Hooper & Hall vs Webber vs Possum 2019) [DCP]
An Affair To Remember (Leo McCarey, Mildred Cram, Donald Ogden Stewart, Delmer Daves 1957) 🎆
After The Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke, Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, after Dashiell Hammett 1936) 🎆
Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (Wheatley & al. 2018) 🎆

Amador (Fernando Léon de Aranoa, 2010)

Nothing Ever Happens (Mack, 1933)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957)
Done in Oil (Meins, 1934)
Sailors, Beware! (Guiol & Yates, 1927)
The Bread and Alley (Kiarostomi, 1970)
Recess (Kiarostomi, 1972)
So Can I (Kiarostomi, 1975)
Two Solutions for One Problem (Kiarostomi, 1975)
The Colors (Kiarostomi, 1976)
How to Make Use of Leisure Time: Painting (Kiarostomi, 1977)
A Wedding Suit (Kiarostomi, 1976)
It Came From Outer Space (Arnold, 1953)
The Traveler (Kiarostomi, 1974)

Oscar Doc hopeful 'Midnight Family' is a delicately delivered look at a deeply damaged and corrupt Mexican medical system from the perspective off a single family running a for-profit ambulance service staffed by a sixteen year old paramedic. everyone involved in the film is simultaneously heroic, cowardly, foolish, clever and desperate. it's a really good film; hope it gets distribution.
https://midnightfamilyfilm.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM5I9N1OzTc

director's first film! lovely and sweet talkback where he discussed the ending which i won't spoil here but it was pretty harrowing how he got it.

one more for anyone interested (And you should be):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR4aCknomCc

I liked Midnight Family. Definitely worth seeing if you can.

Greener Grass is fitfully funny yet so intentionally weird and annoying and off-putting (a la Tim & Eric) that I can barely take it.

It's just so stale, I can't believe we're still living through awful Tom Goes to the Mayor ripoffs and the UCB mindset.

I eventually paused it, saw that I was only at the 25 minute mark, and then said "no way." I possibly said it out loud, to the cat.

imagine the joy of being in a theater at that moment, a few rows away from the director

lmao

*The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Buñuel, 1972) - 8/10
She’s the Man (Fickman, 2006) - 7/10
Matewan (Sayles, 1987) - 9/10
*Vanilla Sky (Crowe, 2001) - 8/10
*Personal Shopper (Assayas, 2016) - 10/10
The Twist (Chabrol, 1976) - 5/10
Songwriter (Rudolph, 1984) - 7/10
Love Before Breakfast (Lang, 1936) - 6/10
The Phantom of Liberty (Buñuel, 1974) - 8/10
Edge of Tomorrow (Liman, 2014) - 7/10
La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995) - 7/10
The Bridesmaid (Chabrol, 2004) - 8/10
*Le Havre (Kaurismäki, 2011)
Death Wish (Winner, 1974) - 8/10
Cobra (Cosmatos, 1986) - 7/10
Idle Hands (Flender, 1999) - 7/10
La Vie de Jésus (Dumont, 1997) - 9/10
*My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946) - 10/10
*The Apartment (Wilder, 1960) - 10/10

Le Havre = 9/10

rewatched Honeyland in theaters; that's definitely a top ten of 2019 in my book.

Tried 'Chained For Life' and, while the intentions appear to be good and Adam Pearson is an arresting presence, the script is overbearing and the acting is painfully bad. Tapped out after 45 minute.

on deck for the next few days: Aquarela in theaters (first time on the big screen, am expecting to be awed) and a pick 'em from the following for (all first time) home viewing: The Lighthouse, Phantom Thread, Hala, I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History a Barbarians, Songs My Brothers Taught Me

Further January big screen watches will include Three Christs (nice cast including Dinklage, Goggins, Bradley Whitford, Julianne Marguiles and the of-late blackballed Richard Gere), Weathering With You (mega-emo looking anime from Makoto Shinkai of "Your Name" fame), and Nicolas Cage tackling HP Lovecraft's Color Out of Space by AWOL horror auteur Richard Stanley

and, as long as I'm offloading, here's my current list of to-be-released films I'm psyched to see in 2020:

After Yang (Kogonada)
Annette (Leo Carax)
Antlers (April 2020)
The Assistant (Jan 2020)
Black Widow (May 2020)
Dune (December 2020)
Eternals (Zhao, November 2020)
First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman, September 2020)
Invisible Man (Feb 2020)
Last Night in Soho (September 2020)
Memoria (Weeraseethakul, 2020)
Nomadland (Zhao, 2020)
Personal History of David Copperfield (Ianucci)
Saint Maude (March 2020)
Soul (Pixar, June 2020)
The Truth (Kore-eda, March 2020)
Underwater (Jan 2020)

*National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (w: Hughes, 1989) 4/10
*The Thin Man (MGM, Van Dyke, 1934) 6/10
*Meet Me in St. Louis (MGM, Minelli, 1944) 7/10
Remember the Night (w: Sturges, 1940) 6/10
Trading Places (Landis, 1983) 4/10
The Silent Partner (Duke, w: Hanson, 1978) 8/10
Murders in the Rue Morgue (Hessler, 1971) 7/10
Five Elements Ninjas (SB, Chang Cheh, 1982) 7/10 that wood ninja got taken down hardcore dammmmmmm
*Watchmen (Snyder, 2009) 7/10 a refresher before watching the tv series

MUBI:

Two-lane backdrop (Hellman, 1971)
Three Colours: White (Kieslowski, 1994)
Three Colours: Blue (Kieslowski, 1993)
A Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997)

Cinema:

Cria Cuervos (Saura, 1976)
So Long, My Son (Xiaoshuai, 2019)
Little Women (Gerwig, 2019)

The High School Hoofer (Mack, 1931)
I'll Fix It (Neill, 1934)
April Fool (Ceder, 1924)
Whispering Whoopee (Horne, 1930)
Tale of the Vienna Woods (Harman & Ising, 1934)
The Report (Kiarostami, 1977)
Solution No. 1 (Kiarostami, 1978)
Orderly or Disorderly (Kiarostami, 1981)
The Chorus (Kiarostami, 1982)
Toothache (Kiarostami, 1983)
Nurse-Mates (Fleischer, 1940)
Body and Soul (Micheaux, 1925)

The Westerner (Wyler, 1940)
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai, 2006)
The Man Who Came to Dinner (Keighly, 1942)
Rare Exports (Helander, 2010)
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (Epstein, Friedman, 2019)
For Me and My Gal (Berkeley, 1942)
Little Women (Gerwig, 2019)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Yates, 1973)
*All You Need Is Cash (Weis, Idle, 1978)
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (Herzog, 1997)
Transit (Petzold, 2018)
Westworld (Crichton, 1973)
Demon Seed (Cammell, 1977)
*Logan's Run (Anderson, 1976)
The Souvenir (Hogg, 2019)
*Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955)
Jamaica Inn (Hitchcock, 1939)
Adam Resurrected (Schrader, 2008)
*Midsommar (Aster, 2019)
Take Aim at the Police Van (Suzuki, 1960)
Shivers (Cronenberg, 1975)
Young Mr. Lincoln (Ford, 1939)
Domino (De Palma, 2019)
That Obscure Object of Desire (Buñuel, 1977)

I watched Domino because it was only 88 minutes and I was like, wait, De Palma still makes movies? Boy was that some dire shit.

Amazing Grace (Pollack, 2019) 7/10
High Life (Denis, 2018) 5/10
Gloria Bell (Lelio, 2019) 6/10
The Gunfighter (King, 1950) 7/10
Howl (Friedman and Epstein, 2010) 5/10
Fast Color (Hart, 2018) 7/10
Before Stonewall (Scagliotti and Schiller, 1984) 8/10
Magnificent Obsession (Sirk, 1954) 7/10
*All of Me (Reiner, 1984) 8/10
Gambling House (Tetzlaff, 1950) 6/10

Women In Love (Russell, 1969)

I liked it a lot. It is one of those period films that seems in retrospect purposely reflective of its own moment.

One Child Nation is fucking horrifying and depressing as hell, but worth it.

*I Only Want You to Love Me (Fassbinder, 1976) - 8/10
Sex is Comedy (Breillat, 2002) - 9/10
Eastern Promises (Cronenberg, 2007) - 9/10
A Rainy Day in New York (Allen, 2018) - 5/10
Vincent & Theo (Altman, 1990) - 6/10
36 Fillette (Breillat, 1988) - 8/10
Three Brothers (Rosi, 1981) - 9/10
Death Wish II (Winner, 1982) - 7/10
A Real Young Girl (Breillat, 1976) - 10/10
Nocturnal Uproar (Breillat, 1979) - 8/10
Germany in Autumn (various, 1978) - 9/10
Twentynine Palms (Dumont, 2003) - 9/10
*Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Tarantino, 2019) - 10/10
Full Moon in Paris (Rohmer, 1984) - 8/10
This Man Must Die (Chabrol, 1969) - 7/10
Anatomy of Hell (Breillat, 2004) - 8/10
*Sawdust and Tinsel (Bergman, 1953) - 9/10
*What’s Up, Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972) - 9/10
Romance (Breillat, 1999) - 9/10
*Shadows in Paradise (Kaurismäki, 1986) - 9/10
Flamingo Road (Curtiz, 1949) - 8/10
*Every Man for Himself (Godard, 1980) - 10/10
Le Joli Mai (Marker & Lhomme, 1963) - 9/10
Fat Girl (Breillat, 2001) - 10/10

The Treasure (Porumboiu, 2015)

Another really good film by him. I liked its found object obsession. Thought the ending was great

his films all seem to be subtle comedies about bureaucracy

xp I liked Eastern Promises, especially Viggo Mortensen in it

Sawdust and Tinsel is one of the Bergman films I haven't seen

If I Had a Million (Lubitsch et al, 1932)
Goldman v Silverman (Safdie & Safdie, 2020)
The King Murder (Thorpe, 1932)
Tribute to the Teachers (Kiarostami, 1977)
First Case, Second Case (Kiarostami, 1979)
The Old Dark House (Castle, 1963)

Felt like re-watching Wolfen for some reason. Not as good as I remembered it being when I was 11.

Little Women (2019, Gerwig) 9/10
*International House (1933, Sutherland) 7/10
*Totally F***ed Up (1993, Araki) 7/10
The Squaw Man (1914, DeMille) 6/10
Don’t Change Your Husband (1919, DeMille) 8/10
The Cheat (1915, DeMille) 7/10
The Signal Tower (1924, Brown) 7/10
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932, Arzner) 7/10
Escale (1935, Valray) 6/10
So’s Your Old Man (1926, La Cava) 8/10
The Loves of Carmen (1927, Walsh) 5/10
The Queen of Spades (1949, Dickinson) 8/10
I Lost My Body (2019, Clapin) 7/10

i also liked that 1949 queen of spades a lot... crazy direction!

MUBI:

Holy Motors (Carax, 2012)
The Wandering Soap Opera (Ruiz/Sarmiento, 2017)

Cinema:

Long Day's Journey into Night (Gan, 2019)
Waves (Shults, 2019)

well ulysses, it's a period Chekhov piece shot kinda like a noir

The Last Black Man in San Francisco 4/5
I Am Cuba (1964) 4/5
Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez (2020) 2.5/5
Scarface (1932) 4/5
Atlantique (2019) 3.5/5
* Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) 4/5
* Memories of Murder (2003) 4.5/5
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992) 3/5
* The Last Detail (1974) 4.5/5
Knives Out 4/5

Shorts/Other:
John's Gone (Safdies, 2010) 3/5
What Did Jack Do? (Lynch, 2017) 3/5
John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (2019) 3/5
Dottie Gets Spanked (Todd Haynes, 1993) 3.5/5

morbs: yes! but with added moments of surrealism.

pushkin, not chekhov

mea culpa! need to read more Russians

Weak But Willing (Watson, 1929)
Melancholy Dame (Gillstrom, 1929)
Faro Nell (Watson, 1929)
The Iron Mule (Arbuckle & Jones, 1925)
She Done Him Wrong (Sherman, 1933)
The Song of Fame (Henabery, 1934)
Berserk! (O'Connolly, 1967)
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Abrams, 2019)

SAG screeners + Independent Spirit Awards + winter + sick = long diary.

The House on the Square (Baker, 1951)
The Helen Morgan Story (Curtiz, 1957)
Farewell, My Lovely (Richards, 1975)
You Were Never Really Here (Ramsey, 2017)
D.O.A. (Maté, 1949)
The Vanishing (Sluizer,1988)
Good Time (Safdies, 2017)
King of New York (Ferrera, 1990)
The Pope of Greenwich Village (Rosenberg, 1984)
*Irma Vep (Assayas, 1996)
The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019)
A Night to Remember (Baker, 1958)
Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (Wolf, 2008)
Ramen Shop (Khoo, 2018)
Hot Summer Nights (Bynum, 2017)
Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (Menken, 1961)
Thunder Road (Cummings, 2018)
Good Boys (Stupnitsky, 2019)
The Irishman (Scorsese, 2019)
Judy (Goold, 2019)
Honeyland (Kotevska, Stefanov, 2019)
Apollo 11 (Miller, 2019)
Uncut Gems (Safdies, 2019)
Goldman v Silverman (Safdies, 2020)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Black, 2005)
Dans Paris (Honoré, 2006)
Marriage Story (Baumbach, 2019)
Unmade Beds (Dos Santos, 2009)
What Did Jack Do? (Lynch, 2017)
London (Keiller, 1994)