Last (x) movies you saw (II)

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.

i mean bcz it has so much horribly mannered acting and a very puffed up sense of 'significance.' the first act where everyone keeps spouting exposition is so tedious. I watched this because sandy dennis and barbara loden are in it but barbara loden disappears too early and sandy dennis is basically an extra. its really weird how barbara loden is in the chorus line that beatty and his dad go to see in the scene where he comes to take him out of harvard. she's standing right there. i thought it was a plot twist but then it wasn't.

but yes, 50s, excuse me.

It's true that that stuff often works better with the 'bigness' of the stage. But I haven't seen SitG in eons (and i think i was most impressed with Zohra Lampert as Beatty's ultimate spouse). It very well could be the weakest of Kazan's prime features (ie the seven he made from '54-63).

plax, you should try "You Don't Nomi" as a nice bookend to Showgirls.

BELLY

Analyze This (Ramis, 1999) - 5/10
Between the Lines (Silver, 1977) - 4/10
Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959) - 10/10
First Cow (Reichardt, 2019) - 8/10
Bonjour Tristesse (Preminger, 1958) - 8/10
The Final Comedown (Williams, 1972) - 8/10
Graduate First (Pialat, 1978) - 10/10
*Bamboozled (Lee, 2000) - 10/10
The Age of Innocence (Scorsese, 1993) - 8/10
Gloria (Cassavetes, 1980) - 8/10
*Magnificent Obsession (Sirk, 1954) - 8/10
Saint Jack (Bogdanovich, 1979) - 9/10
Dead Ringer (Henreid, 1964) - 7/10
Revolutionary Road (Mendes, 2008) - 5/10
Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut, 1960) - 6/10
I Shot Jesse James (Fuller, 1949) - 8/10
Noises Off (Bogdanovich, 1992) - 7/10
Black Widow (Rafaelson, 1987) - 8/10
Edge of Eternity (Siegel, 1959) - 8/10
*The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (Ozu, 1952) - 9/10
Don’t Bother to Knock (Baker, 1952) - 7/10
*Breathless (Godard, 1960) - 6/10
The Mouth Agape (Pialat, 1974) - 8/10
Illegally Yours (Bogdanovich, 1988) - 6/10
*Husbands (Cassavetes, 1970) - 9/10
The Night Porter (Cavani, 1974) - 10/10
Take a Girl Like You (Miller, 1970) - 9/10
Little Odessa (Gray, 1994) - 8/10
New Jack City (Van Peebles, 1991) - 8/10
Love and Anarchy (Wertmüller, 1973) - 9/10
*Zoolander (Stiller, 2001) - 10/10
Stardust Memories (Allen, 1980) - 9/10
Year of the Comet (Yates, 1992) - 7/10

V much enjoyed zazie dans le metro and thank you wmc. I also intend to watch the other recs this week

everyone should watch the newly available 1977 doc "Word Is Out"; it's remarkable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bXfALa7YlU
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/wordisout

July:

Dr. Phibes Rises Again (Fuest, 1972) 6/10
Kelly's Heroes (Hutton, 1970) 6/10
Don't Panic Chaps! (Pollock, 1959) 4/10
Martin (Romero, 1977) 8/10
Detour (Ulmer, 1945) 8/10
Blue Collar (Schrader, 1978) 8/10
The Mummy's Ghost (Le Borg, 1944) 4/10
The Case of the Bloody Iris (Carnimeo, 1972) 7/10
City Hunter (Wong, 1993) 4/10
The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (Ercoli, 1970) 6/10
The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (Ozu, 1952) 9/10
Dressed to Kill (De Palma, 1980) 7/10
The Night Stalker (Moxey, 1972) 7/10
The Body Beneath (Milligan, 1970) 8/10
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (Griffith, 1916) 8/10
A Weekend With Lulu (Carstairs, 1961) 5/10
Night and Fog (Resnais, 1956)
Bob & Carol & Ted * Alice (Mazursky, 1969) 7/10
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Werker, 1939) 7/10
Funeral in Berlin (Hamilton, 1966) 6/10
The Satanic Rites of Dracula (Gibson, 1973) 6/10
Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (Rawlins, 1942) 6/10
Eaten Alive! (Lenzi, 1980)

The Parallax View, one of my favorite 1970s movies.

City Hunter has the worst signal-to-noise in astonishing action pieces patched together by the flimsiest acting/plot.

It was all the terrible 'comedy' that killed City Hunter for me, though the Street Fighter parody is indeed all kinds of wtf

oh it's all time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBsajdIZf74

The Lady Who Dared (Beaudine, 1931)
A Girl in Every Port (Hawks, 1928)
Just a Pain in the Parlor (Marshall, 1932)
Tartuffe (Murnau, 1925)
The Racketeer (Higgin, 1929)
*Werewolf of London (Walker, 1935)
Pep Up (Martin, 1929)
Love's Young Scream (Watson, 1928)
*Fluttering Hearts (Parrott, 1927)

The Go-Go's (2020) 3.5/5
Soleil Ô (1967) 3.5/5
* The Swimmer (1968) 3.5/5
Showbiz Kids (2020) 3/5
* Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) 4/5
First Cow (2020) 3.5/5
* Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) 2.5/5
* My Darling Clementine (1946) 5/5

We watched "Out of the Past" last night. It had been a while, but as soon as it started I excitedly told my daughter, "wait, this movie has one of the most ridiculous on-screen deaths in movie history!" So every time someone was shot she'd look at me and ask "was that it?" and I'd say "no, you'll know it when you see it." And then it finally happens, toward the end, and she turns to me and just says "oh, ok, that's it."

1) I've hardly watched any films the past couple of months--been rewatching my favourite TV shows.

2) I had to have my operating system reinstalled a few weeks ago, so I lost the document where I kept track (for this thread) of what I'd recently seen. So this is from memory, going back weeks, and missing a few films.

The Big Heat (8.0)
In a Lonely Place (7.5)
Hillary (6.5)
Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (6.0)
Vamps (5.0)
Almost Famous (7.5)
Ghost World (8.0)
Absence of Malice (7.5)
First Cow (6.0)

there are no ridiculous deaths in Out of the Past

you must've been thinking of Haneke's Amour

Devil’s Doorway (A. Mann, 1950) 8/10
Washington Merry-Go-Round (Cruze, 1932) 6/10
*The Strawberry Blonde (Walsh, 1941) 8/10
Moonlight on the Highway (MacTaggart/Potter, TV, 1969) 7/10
Silver Lode (Dwan, 1954) 8/10
Cowboy (Daves, 1958) 7/10
Cynara (K. Vidor, 1932) 7/10
*Dinner at Eight (Cukor, 1933) 9/10
Stella Dallas (King, 1925) 8/10
The Given Word (Duarte, 1962) 7/10
Grand Prix (Frankenheimer, 1966) 7/10
*The Champ (K. Vidor, 1931) 8/10

*They All Laughed (Bogdanovich, 1981) - 10/10
Belly (Williams, 1998) - 9/10
*Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Greaves, 1968) - 10/10
Hilda Crane (Dunne, 1956) - 7/10
The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese, 1988) - 9/10
Night Moves (Penn, 1975) - 7/10
Underworld U.S.A. (Fuller, 1961) - 8/10
Le Notti Bianche (Visconti, 1957) - 8/10
One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich & the Lost American Film (Teck, 2014) - 8/10
The Hot Rock (Yates, 1972) - 7/10
Swept Away (Wertmüller, 1974) - 9/10
Hell and High Water (Fuller, 1954) - 7/10
Hussy (Chapman, 1980) - 7/10
The Love Witch (Biller, 2016) - 8/10
Brutal Tales of Chivalry (Saeki, 1965) - 7/10
Key Largo (Huston, 1949) - 7/10
The Whistleblower (Kondracki, 2010) - 6/10
Park Row (Fuller, 1952) - 9/10
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Lubitsch, 1938) - 8/10
Mandabi (Sembène, 1968) - 8/10
Good Will Hunting (Van Sant, 1997) - 7/10
*The Third Generation (Fassbinder, 1979) - 10/10
Mr. Jones (Holland, 2019) - 6/10
The Letter (Wyler, 1940) - 8/10
Mean Johnny Barrows (Williamson, 1976) - 7/10
Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli, 1944) - 10/10
The Hospital (Hiller, 1971) - 5/10
*Senso (Visconti, 1954) - 8/10
Viva (Biller, 2007) - 7/10
The Horse Soldiers (Ford, 1959) - 8/10
Let’s Make Love (Cukor, 1960) - 7/10
*Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954) - 9/10

Scorsese Shorts:
—What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? - 9/10
—It’s Not Just You, Murray! - 7/10
—The Big Shave - 9/10
—Italianamerican - 9/10
—American Boy - 7/10

I watch a film a day for the most part. today I saw Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. It's hard to imagine how you all could see so many more films than me. I'm in awe of your lists

More television than films for me in the past two weeks, but here's what i got.

Great:
Short Films of Charley Bowers - 1927 to 1935
Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (Mariposa Film Group, 1977)
The Legend of Drunken Master (1994, Chia-Liang – Hadn't seen this in twenty year, boy does it ever hold up!)

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
All I Can Say (Hoon, 2020)
Cunningham (Kovgan, 2020)
Trust Us, This Is All Made Up (Karpovsky, 2009)
Too Funny To Fail (Greenbaum, 2017)

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
The Indian Tomb (Lang, 1960)
Fist of Fury (Wei, 1972)

No:
Vanilla (Dennis, 2019)
The Disappearance of My Mother (2019, Barrese)

is legend of drunken Master drunken Master 2?