Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Harry In Your Pocket (1973 pickpocket flick starring James Coburn, the only film directed by Mission Impossible creator Bruce Geller) for higher dosages.

Terrific movie and ashamed I forgot it (stand corrected of FBB)

The depression/insomnia/existential dread has finally receded enough for me to start watching movies again, so in the last three days it's been:

Crimewave (the forgotten/discarded Coens/Raimi joint; shrill and dumb and way more fun than its reputation suggests) 3/5
Antiviral (Cronenberg fils' debut picture which has been sitting on my shelf in shrinkwrap for like 6 years; see above re: depression- was surprised by how much I loved this) 4/5
Seventh Curse (want to see a martial arts movie where Chow Yun-Fat does nothing but smoke a pipe and shoot a demon in the face with a rocket launcher? you should, it rules) 3.5/5

Just saw an excellent documentary called "An Uncomfortable Truth." The backstory is that my wife grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and one of her favorite teachers, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, was a famous civil rights activist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Trumpauer_Mulholland). My wife sort of knew that, but she was probably too young at the time to appreciate it. Anyway, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland has two sons, Loki and Geronimo (how cool is that?), that my wife knew, and Loki specifically has gone on to make a couple of great documentaries, the first about his mom and the second, this one, which is simultaneously about the racist foundations of America but also about how he and his mom, this famous civil rights activist, have personally benefitted from that same racist foundation, stretching all the way back to his slave owning family at Jonestown. Anyway, it's really a beautiful story, told simply and powerfully, that gets to the heart of a lot of truths about this country that people don't talk much about or, maybe more accurately, are starting to talk about more right now.

Anyway, it can be streamed lots of places.

Toni (Renoir, 1935)
Whirlpool (Neill, 1934)
Panique (Duvivier, 1946)
Foolish Wives (von Stroheim, 1922)
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (Juran & Harryhausen, 1958)
*It's a Gift (Fay, 1923)
*Won in a Closet (Normand, 1914)
A Waggin' Tale (de Haven, 1923)

June:

Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren & Hammid, 1943) 9/10
The Cat and the Canary (Nugent, 1939) 8/10
GU04 (Strickland, 2019) 6/10
Die, Monster, Die (Haller, 1965) 5/10
A Study in Terror (Hill, 1965) 7/10
The Case of the Scorpion's Tale (Martino, 1971) 7/10
Exorcist II: The Heretic (Boorman, 1977) 4/10
Moon Zero Two (Baker, 1969) 7/10
Night of the Eagle (Hayers, 1962) 7/10
Vera Cruz (Aldrich, 1954) 7/10
Pieces (Simón, 1982) 7/10
Sudden Fear (Miller, 1952) 8/10
The Full Treatment (Guest, 1960) 4/10
Swamp (Holt & Smithson, 1969) 9/10
The Damned (Losey, 1963) 7/10
You Only Live Once (Lang, 1937) 8/10
Ten Seconds to Hell (Aldrich, 1959) 4/10
Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji (Uchida, 1955) 8/10
Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Martino, 1972) 7/10
Calling All Police Cars (Caiano, 1975) 7/10

two weeks, pretty light:

Great:
Be Water (2020, Nguyen)
The Jerk (1974, Reiner)

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
Where’s My Roy Cohn? (2019, Tyrnauer)
El Campeón de Mundo (2020, Madiero and Borgia)
Who You Think I Am (2020, Sebbou)

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
Sometimes Always Never (2020, Hunter)
Ringside (2020, Hörmann)
Eating up Easter (2020, Mata’u Rapu)
Booksellers (2020, Young)

For "Who You Think I Am" I spent a week collaborating with a french speaker to write English fansubs, first time I ever tried that. Watched the movie probably nine times. Happy to share if anyone's interested!

I'm also taking on a project of watching all the historical Looney Tunes shorts. The Bosko ones are repetitive, formulaic and racist but there are some truly hallucinogenic ideas and designs.

Getting back up to speed.

13 Ghosts (Castle, 1960)- 2.5/5 'salright
*Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)- 4.5/5 damn near perfect film, not a fan of Burwell's score but that's just nitpicking
The Swimmer (Perry, 1968)- 3/5 unsure about the expansion from Cheever's story (haven't read it in ages but I feel like there was a more, for lack of a better term, magical realist dimension than "oh this dude crazy" as in the film) but the casting and seedy suburban-ness (that gross pool party with the big plastic dome!), and Marvin Hamlisch's overripe romantic-to-the-point-of-gothic score, are excellent
Succubus/Necronomicon (Franco, 1968)- 3/5 the first Franco film I've really vibed with; I'm not denying Franco's artistry but it's easier to come to grips with Succubus' art film pretensions than the usual Franco feel of "check out my partner's bush, it is fuckin righteous"

*Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959) 10/10
If You Could Only Cook (Seiter, 1935) 6/10
The Fountainhead (K. Vidor, 1949) 4/10
*Bunny Lake Is Missing (Preminger, 1965) 7/10
The Westerner (Wyler, 1940) 8/10
Drive a Crooked Road (Quine, 1954) 6/10
Phase IV (Bass, 1974) 8/10
*Bonjour Tristesse (Preminger, 1958) 10/10
That Certain Summer (Johnson, TV, 1972) 5/10
*The Lineup (Siegel, 1958) 9/10
*Big Night (Tucci, Scott, 1996) 8/10
Captains Courageous (Fleming, 1937) 7/10
*Death Race 2000 (Bartel, 1975) 6/10

That Certain Summer (Johnson, TV, 1972) 5/10

Got a significant segment in the new AppleTV+ five-part series on the history of LGBTQ representation on American TV. Hard to tell if it was good but I'll certainly shop Hal Holbrook and young Martin Sheen.

It's to 1972 what Philadelphia was to 1993; a timid foot in the door, a plea for tolerance. Holbrook gives a solid performance despite the limitations. There are some very enlightening video interviews online with Holbrook, William Link (one of the two Columbo/Mannix guys who wrote it), and the director Lamont Johnson, who says Martin Sheen approached him one day hoping to work a cure for homosexuality into the plot...

what do you think of Daisy Kenyon? I don't think I've seen that much Preminger

Dance, Girl, Dance (Arzner, 1940) - 8/10
*Belle de Jour (Buñuel, 1967) - 9/10
*Get Him to the Greek (Stoller, 2010) - 8/10
L’enfance Nue (Pialat, 1968) - 9/10
Summer Hours (Assayas, 2008) - 7/10
*Vivre sa Vie (Godard, 1962) - 10/10
The Town (Affleck, 2010) - 4/10
*Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (Fassbinder, 1975) - 10/10
Strait-Jacket (Castle, 1964) - 9/10
White Heat (Walsh, 1949) - 9/10
The Most Dangerous Game (Schoedsack, Pichel; 1932) - 8/10
Secret Ceremony (Losey, 1968) - 6/10
*The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959) - 8/10
Da 5 Bloods (Lee, 2020) - 8/10
*Satan’s Brew (Fassbinder, 1976) - 9/10
Postcards from the Edge (Nichols, 1990) - 7/10
*A Married Woman (Godard, 1965) - 8/10
Wasp Network (Assayas, 2020) - 7/10
That’s My Boy (Anders, 2012) - 6/10
Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955) - 9/10
Accident (Losey, 1967) - 6/10
The Sleeping Beauty (Breillat, 2010) - 7/10
Irresistible (Stewart, 2020) - 0/10
Irma Vep (Assayas, 1996) - 8/10
*Despair (Fassbinder, 1978) - 5/10
Dark Victory (Goulding, 1939) - 7/10
Police (Pialat, 1985) - 7/10
Supernatural (Halperin, 1933) - 7/10
*Les Biches (Chabrol, 1968) - 9/10
Riff-Raff (Loach, 1991) - 8/10
I Am Curious (Blue) (Sjöman, 1968) - 8/10

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (Taurog, 1934)
It’s the Old Army Game (Sutherland, 1926)
America (Griffith, 1924)
Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (Beaudine, 1966)
Shine Em Up (Davis, 1922)
A Thrilling Romance (Robbins, 1926)
*The Scarecrow (Keaton & Cline, 1920)

Busy week and a half.

Great:
Jasper Mall (Thomason and Whitcomb, 2020)
The Personal History of David Copperfield (Iannucci, 2020)

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
Red Dog (Pinkston and Dick, 2020)
Miss Juneteenth (Peoples, 2020)
Pahokie (Lucas and Bresnan, 2020)
Pipe Dreams (Tenenbaum, 2020)
Aya of Yop City (Abouet and Oubrerie, 2013)
Jump Shot (Hamiton, 2019)

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
Inmate 1: The Rise of Danny Trejo (Harvey, 2020)

On-Deck:
First Cow, Lynn and Lucy, Radioactive, Ghost of Peter Sellers, Fanny Lye Deliver'd, John Lewis: Good Trouble, Radioactive, Relic, Scheme Birds

I thought "Palm Springs" was better than I expected it to be, if not really as good as it could have been, but it was still enjoyable. Great soundtrack.

Watched "The Seventh Seal," "Spirit of the Beehive" and "Some Like it Hot" with my daughter this week. Appreciated but I don't think liked the first, liked the second, but (of course) really enjoyed the third.

where is Palm Springs? Netflix?

Hulu

Booloo

ilplex too!

There should be a streaming service called Fomo.

I should say my *daughter* enjoyed those aforementioned movies to varying degrees (I'd already seen them of course). I'm always curious what a 2020 teen thinks of classic movies or "foreign" or art films. Will their iconic qualities transcend the language barrier, or the black and white, or the grainy image or the style of filmmaking? Or, as is frequently the case with her and classic American movies, the everyone-is-whiteness, or everyone-is-maleness. It's always satisfying to watch decades old classics still able do the thing they're classic for, but it's also interesting to rewatch classics that for whatever reason don't hold up or hold her attention. Everyone is different, but it's something we (or at least) generally can't recall, the moment when our brains shift when we're young from more or less mindless mainstream consumers to more discerning cineastes. Doesn't happen to everyone, obviously, and doesn't need to. There are plenty of movies to go around. Still, it's wonderful when you realize there's a whole section - or several floors - of the library you've never learned about before.

Encouraging and also makes sense that His Girl Friday was a hit, I think

Raining Stones (Loach, 1993) - 7/10
—The Curve (Shaki, 1999) - 10/10 <------ INCREDIBLE short by Edwige Shaki
*The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1979) - 9/10
*Bad Timing (Roeg, 1980) - 10/10
Hardcore (Schrader, 1979) - 9/10
Drums Along the Mohawk (Ford, 1939) - 8/10
*Metropolitan (Stillman, 1990) - 8/10
The Cinema and Its Double (Fischer, 2011) - 8/10
*In a Year with 13 Moons (Fassbinder, 1978) - 10/10
Blue Collar (Schrader, 1978) - 9/10
Berserk! (O'Connolly, 1967) - 7/10
Fixed Bayonets! (Fuller, 1951) - 7/10
We Won’t Grow Old Together (Pialat, 1972) - 10/10
Joe (Avildsen, 1970) - 7/10
Sing a Song of Sex (Oshima, 1967) - 7/10
Sleep, My Love (Sirk, 1948) - 6/10
Loulou (Pialat, 1980) - 9/10
Beggars of Life (Wellman, 1928) - 9/10
*Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi, 1954) - 9/10
Ruthless People (Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker; 1986) - 5/10
The Steel Helmet (Fuller, 1951) - 8/10
Billy Liar (Schlesinger, 1963) - 6/10
Three Resurrected Drunkards (Oshima, 1968) - 8/10

Afraid to Talk (Cahn, 1932)
My Best Girl (Taylor, 1927)
Open All Night (Pearson, 1934)
Oranges and Lemons (Jeske, 1923)
A Bathtub Bandit (Santell, 1917)
*The Rink (Chaplin,, 1916)

xpost She loved His Girl Friday.

A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger, 1946)
The Blues Brothers (Landis, 1980)
Hana-Bi (Kitano, 1997)
Ad Astra (Gray, 2019)
*I Confess (Hitchcock, 1953)
Dolemite is My Name (Brewer, 2019)
It's Alive (Cohen, 1974)
Pain and Glory (Almodóvar, 2019)
*Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951)
Bodyguard (Fleischer, 1948)

The bad thing about the Netflix-made comicbook action fantasy Old Guard is that it's not better: tonally all over the place, regularly show-stopping lines of tin-eared dialogue, astonishingly bad music queues, a few poorly/under-acted characters and jam-packed with clichés. Pontificating about making the world better while ruthlessly murdering balaclava-masked men by the dozens, check; midlevel miniboss dispatched with a pithy punchline, check; betrayals that you can smell coming a half hour away, check; one last job for shit that you're getting too old for, check; gratuitous sequel-set-up at the end, check.

BUT it's intelligently laid out, well directed, mostly engaging and Theron is a magnetic presence and an unbeatable special effect. If you're even thinking about watching it, it's likely worth about an hour and a half of your time and I'll bet you won't begrudge the extra half hour they jammed in there to juke the stats.

fights are well-done, the attempts to show various historical warzones across thousands of years by having close-up two-shots of Charlize's face wearing different stock "period" headdresses while talking to someone in smoky eye make-up are unintentionally v funny

*The Idle Class (Chaplin, 1921) (33m) 8/10
Ernie Pyle’s Story of G.I. Joe (Wellman, 1945) 9/10
The Married Woman (Godard, 1964) 8/10
Riffraff (Ruben, 1936) 6/10
Secrets (Borzage, 1933) 6/10
Family Viewing (Egoyan, 1987) 7/10
Between the Lines (Silver, 1977) 7/10
*The Comic (C. Reiner, 1969) 6/10
The Symbol of the Unconquered (Micheaux, 1920) (incomplete) 6/10
Next of Kin (Egoyan, 1984) 7/10

Central Park (1989) 4/5
I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) 4/5
* Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982) 3/5
Lenny Cooke (2013) 3.5/5
* Pale Flower (1964) 3.5/5
* Depeche Mode: 101 (1989) 4/5
Palm Springs (2020) 3.5/5
* Demolition Man (1993) 2.5/5
* Having a Wild Weekend (1965) 3/5
* Casino (1995) 4.5/5
Bullitt (1968) 4/5
Skidoo (1968) who knows
Time After Time (1979) 3.5/5
Ford v Ferrari 3/5
My Brother's Wedding (1983) 3.5/5
* All About Eve (1950) 4/5
Monrovia, Indiana (2018) 3.5/5
* Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988) 4/5
Nightfall (1958) 3.5/5
* The Abyss (1989) 3/5
Roger Waters: The Wall (2014) 3.5/5

Daughter very much approved of "Double Indemnity."

The Live Ghost (Rogers, 1934)
Super Stupid (Jason, 1934)
The Babbling Book (Scotto, 1932)
The Railrodder (Keaton & Potterton, 1965)
The Crosby Case (Marin, 1934)
Fast and Loose (Newmeyer, 1930)
Atlantic (Dupont, 1929)
The Water Plug (Jeske, 1920)
Robinet's White Suit (Perez, 1911)
*Number, Please? (Roach & Newmeyer, 1920)

I just saw those last 3 via the Watch Party as well. I'd seen the Robinet before, but not Lloyd.

made in u.s.a. (ken friedman '87) 6.5/10
female trouble (waters '75) 6/10
the lighthouse (eggars 2019) 8/10
palm springs (max barbakow 2020) 5.5/10
coco (unkrich 2017) 10/10
*the humbling (levinson 2014) 6/10
marianne & leonard: words of love (broomfield 2019) 6.5/10
recorder: the marion stokes project (matt wolf 2019) 7/10
frankie (sachs 2019) 7.5/10

The Bigamist (Lupino, 1953)
Nymphomaniac Vols. I & II (Von Trier, 2014)
Duvidha (Kaul, 1973)
Naseem (Akhtar Mirza, 1995)
Woman at War (Erlingsson, 2019)
The Hitch-hiker (Lupino, 1953)
Black Power Mixtape 1967 - 1975 (Olsson, 2011)

Edmond O'Brien's face in The Bigamist... when he's found out, but really throughout. Such a bizarre movie

Just watched it tonight and that was my reaction too.

The Fearless Hyena (Chan, 1979)
Almayer's Folly (Akerman, 2011)
It's Not Just You, Murray! (short - Scorsese, 1964)
But I'm a Cheerleader (Babbit, 1999)
Last Hurrah for Chivalry (Woo, 1979)
The Above (short - Johnson, 2015)
Orpheus (Cocteau, 1950)
Mafioso (Lattuada, 1962)
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (Schible, 2019)
Uncle (short - Jireš, 1959)
Blood on the Moon (Wise, 1948)
D'Est (Akerman 1993)
Miss Annie Rooney (Marin, 1942)
Loves of a Blonde (Forman, 1965)
The White Balloon (Panahi, 1995)
*My Own Private Idaho (Van Sant, 1991)
The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)
A Night in the Show (short - Chaplin, 1915)
The Rink (short - Chaplin, 1916)
Pygmalion (Asquith, Howard, 1938)
The Bigamist (Lupino, 1953)
*Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson, 2012)
Death by Hanging (Oshima, 1968)

The Human Factor (Preminger, 1979) 7/10
The Kentucky Fried Movie (Landis, 1977) 5/10
*Lost in America (Brooks, 1985) 10/10
Walk on the Wild Side (Dmytryk, 1962) 5/10
Le Gai Savoir (Godard, 1969) 5/10
*The Kid (Chaplin, 1921) 9/10
*Head (Rafelson, 1968) 8/10
Min and Bill (Hill, 1930) 6/10
Smart Money (Green, 1931) 7/10
The Big House (Hill, 1930) 6/10

Great (non-2020):
The Tiger of Eschnapur (1960, Lang… racist as fuck unfortunately)

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
Palm Springs (Barbakow, 2020)
The Ghost of Peter Sellers (Medak, 2020)
Air Conditioner (Fradique, 2020)
John Lewis: Good Trouble (Porter, 2020)

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
Old Guard (2020, Prince-Bythewood)

No:
The Translators (Roinsard, 2020)

Rewatched Sorcerer tonight. Friedkin’s second best movie after TLADILA.

Funeral in Berlin (Guy Hamilton, 1966) 10/10

Upon rescreening I realized that a) this is one of my top three comfort movies, and b) like the other two movies (Cheung Foh & Topsy-Turvy) it has a godawful soundtrack.

If you've never seen The Breaking Point, you are missing one of the most devastating final shots in film history.

Parasite (Bong, 2019)
*Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1953)
Born in Flames (Borden, 1983)
*Airplane (Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker, 1980)
Stella Dallas (Vidor, 1937)
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Petri, 1970)
*Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Britannia Hospital (Anderson, 1982)
Daughters of the Dust (Dash, 1991)
*The Breaking Point (Curtiz, 1950)

The Lucky Number (Asquith, 1932)
Slipping Wives (Guiol, 1927)
From Soup to Nuts (Kennedy, 1928)
The Beloved Rogue (Crosland, 1927)
*The Land Unknown (Vogel, 1957)
The Hole in the Wall (1919)
At Coney Island (Sennett, 1912)
*A Little Hero (Sennett, 1913)
*Distilled Love (Smith & Moore, 1920)

the hitchhiker
the truth
die sieger

quickly recommend me a movie to watch tonight. can't think of anything. nothing macho. maybe something with a girl and an irresistible beat from the radio.

last tenish were probably

from the journals of jean seberg - rappaport (loved)
come and get it - hawks/wyler (loved)
my brillian career - armstrong (hated)
les dames du bois de boulogne - Bresson (loved)
Showgirls - Verhoeven (only okay, people who go on about this are kidding themselves)
seventh continent - haneke (only okay, felt like a tumblr account)
malina - schroeter (loved this, hilarious)
that cold day in the park - altman (some parts were great but i could have easily not watched this)
splendor in the grass - kazan (strongly suggested that american theater in the 60s was unbearable.)
alice doesn't live here anymore (i started tidying the room before this was over. not captivaing)
taxi driver - scorsese (this was fine)
touki bouki - dijbril diop mambety (would have loved this without all the incredibly explicit animal slaughter shots, have watched so many films with animals being slaughtered recently and i would prefer not to ever again especially after this one)

quickly recommend me a movie to watch tonight. can't think of anything. nothing macho. maybe something with a girl and an irresistible beat from the radio.

Zazie dans le Métro

Les Rendez-vous d'Anna

Thank you both!

splendor in the grass - kazan (strongly suggested that american theater in the 60s was unbearable.)

You might be aiming at the '50s since it was shot in 1960; you mean bcz it was written by William Inge? I think Kazan was more focused on movies by this point; his period of remaking American theatre was more 1945-59.