Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Three weeks where I went heavy on quirky indie docs and got what I deserved:

Great Movies:
Martha: A Picture Story (2020, Miles)

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
Lucky Grandma (2020, Sealy)
Korla (2015, Turner and Christensen)

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
She Dies Tomorrow (2020, Seimetz)
Tu Me Manques (2020, Bellot)
Tiny Tim: King for a Day (2020, von Sydow)
Class Action Park (2020, Porges and Scott III)

Deeply Flawed to Barely Watchable:
Boys State (2020, Moss and McBaine)
Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren and Stimpy Story (2020, Cicero and Easterwood)
Pretending I’m Superman: The Tony Hawk Game Story (2020, Gür)
Feels Good Man (2020, Jones)
Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020, Parisot)

*Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (Altman, 1976) - 8/10
Hi Diddle Diddle (Stone, 1943) - 8/10
Blue Denim (Dunne, 1959) - 10/10
Black Widow (Johnson, 1954) - 7/10
*Spree (Kotlyarenko, 2020) - 9/10
The Crimson Kimono (Fuller, 1959) - 9/10
*Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (Fassbinder, 1970) - 7/10
Tobacco Road (Ford, 1941) - 8/10
In Bruges (McDonagh, 2008) - 8/10
*The Image Book (Godard, 2018) - 10/10
*World on a Wire (Fassbinder, 1973) - 9/10
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (Curtiz, 1933) - 8/10
Me and You and Everyone We Know (July, 2005) - 8/10
Bunny Lake is Missing (Preminger, 1965) - 8/10
High Sierra (Walsh, 1941) - 7/10
Dragonwyck (Mankiewicz, 1946) - 8/10
Grand Hotel (Goulding, 1932) - 7/10
*The Merchant of Four Seasons (Fassbinder, 1971) - 10/10
The Panic in the Needle Park (Schatzberg, 1971) - 7/10
The Princess Comes Across (Howard, 1936) - 7/10
Seven Psychopaths (McDonagh, 2012) - 6/10
The True Story of Jesse James (Ray, 1957) - 7/10
Night and the City (Dassin, 1950) - 9/10
*Vivre sa Vie (Godard, 1962) - 10/10
The Last Hurrah (Ford, 1958) - 8/10

August:

The Kid (Chaplin, 1921) 7/10
The Boston Strangler (Fleischer, 1968) 5/10
The Lost Continent (Carreras, 1968) 7/10
The Scarlet Blade (Gilling, 1963) 6/10
The Bad Seed (LeRoy, 1956) 5/10
Two Thousand Maniacs! (Lewis, 1964) 7/10
The Pleasure Garden (Hitchcock, 1925) 4/10
Thriller: A Cruel Picture (Vibenius, 1973) 7/10
Tenderness of the Wolves (Lommel, 1973) 8/10
Angst (Kargl, 1983) 9/10
Watch it, Sailor! (Rilla, 1961) 3/10
The Killers (Siodmak, 1946) 8/10
Force of Evil (Polonsky, 1948) 8/10
El Topo (Jodorowsky, 1970) 8/10
Deadhead Miles (Zimmerman, 1972) 8/10
Slave Girls (Carreras, 1967) 4/10
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Meyer, 1965) 8/10
A Star is Born (Cukor, 1954) 8/10

*The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Sciama, 2019)
Uncut Gems (Safdie & Safdie, 2019)
Little Women (Gerwig, 2019)
To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You (Fimognari, 2020)
*Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964)
My Beautiful Laundrette (Frears, 1985)
Atlantics (Diop, 2019)
*The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1920)
The Day of the Dolphin (Nichols, 1973)

I doubt I will ever see the new Janelle Monae movie, but I find it kind of amusing/amazing that it co-stars Jena Malone, whose name is practically an anagram for Janelle Monae.

The Golfers (Sennett, 1929)
English as She is Not Spoken (1928)
The Woman in Black (Marston, 1914)
Working Girls (Arzner, 1931)
Movie-Town (Sennett, 1931)
Borrowed Wives (Strayer, 1930)
Red Heels (Curtiz, 1925)
The Blob (Yeaworth, 1958)
Short Orders (Roach & Pembroke, 1923)
His Busy Day (Roach, 1918)
*From Hand to Mouth (Roach & Goulding, 1919)
Tillie & Gus (Martin, 1933)

A list from some of your summer lists---minus the ratings, because I haven't seen any of them recently enough, though I believe, I know, that they're all distinctively good) (some others prob as good, possibly better, aren't on this list because don't remember them as well as these):
Ghost World (Zwigoff, 2001)
North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (Altman, 1976)
Bunny Lake is Missing (Preminger, 1965)
High Sierra (Walsh, 1941)
Grand Hotel (Goulding, 1932)
The Panic in Needle Park (Schatzberg, 1971)(corrected to only one “The”)
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Meyer, 1965)
A Star is Born (Cukor, 1954)
The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963)

someone pick me a movie for tonight!

(please)

not like shoah or anything though

I'm Thinking of Ending Things? Haven't seen it yet and want opinions.

peep the charlie kaufman thread

Ash Is Purest White. I think that has stuck with me more than most new movies i've seen in the last few years and it looks so good.

amazing movie

ok done, otherwise i would have watched that kaufman film but i wasn't very keen on the idea

don't worry about missing out on opinions, I have really bad opinions!

we all do, that's why we're here.

I like my bad opinions like I like my bad onions, erm.. incarcerated in butter with garlic!

multi-layered and likely to make me cry

they stay almost the same forever just getting gradually worse

* Big Time (1988) 3/5
* The Who: The Kids Are Alright (1979) 4/5
* Body Double (1984) 3.5/5
Rancho Notorious (1952) 3/5
Bill & Ted Face the Music 3/5
* Europa (1991) 4/5
A Kid from Coney Island (2020; Stephon Marbury doc on Netflix) 3/5
Trances (1981) 3.5/5
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (2020) 2.5/5
Bacurau (2019) 3.5/5
* Indiana and the Last Crusade (1989) 3.5/5

I saw this great B war movie from the late 50s calkled Hell Squad last week .
THought it must be an early work by somebody it seemed to transcend its limited budget quite well.
A bunch of US soldiers lost in the desert running into various Germans etc.

Saw Waterloo with Rod Steiger last week too, may have been what was on before the above.
NOt sure if I've watched it through before thoroughly or certainly not while I've concentrated on it.
Quite good I guess.
Should have stayed up and watched A Fistful Of Dynamite a couple of days ago with Steiger again but couldn't do it.

Seed The Untold Story
a documentary on the iomportance of seed saving etc which I think is current and is going to be the subject of some talks online by ecological groups tomorrow. I thought it was pretty interesting.

I don't * movies here because sometimes I can't remember if I've seen a film before, or have seen it so long ago I have zero memory of it, or have only seen bits and pieces of it over the years on TV etc. So I admire the iron memory and confidence of all you *ers!

sometimes I forget what I had for my tea these days or my brain just blanks out on movies I've probably seen at least 3 times. I won't start worrying about it until I wake up getting arrested for having a number twosie in the B+Q bathroom suite section!

what didn't you like about Bloody Nose?

Did not care for the staginess of it; thought it was going to be more of a verite thing when I first heard about it. Might have been more interesting to me if a Herzog-ian eccentric was behind it. Also, frankly, one of the barflies reminded me of some idiot I know and can't stand.

interesting. people either love it or hate it, seems like! I wanna see for myself.

Ash Is Purest White. I think that has stuck with me more than most new movies i've seen in the last few years and it looks so good.

― calzino, Thursday, 10 September 2020 19:23 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This was absolutely amazing, and completely new and revelatory for me as I have never seen any films by this director. Me and my boyfriend loved it, and particularly the performance by Zhao Tao, felt like seeing Isabelle Huppert for the first time, the sense that she had the film in her jaws. But yeah so many things to look at, the cities and the mountains, the ferry on the muddy rivers, ballroom dancers. It felt very close to the largeness of classic american cinema: family epics (giant, the magnificent ambersons) (the first film I've seen set entirely within the 21st that shows characters growing older and living out a generation), or frontier pictures about the goldrush. I felt very energised after watching it and fell asleep reading about the director on my phone in bed and had a really bad day today not doing any of the things i was supposed to do properly. This is why phones are banned in bed.

kindof terrified to watch another one too soon in case its not as good

i loved A Touch of Sin and Still Life so you're in good hands imo

Platform (about a propaganda theatre troupe) and Mountains May Depart are classic as well. Your enthusiasm is making me want to rewatch them all again!

There is no way A Touch Of Sin will dissapoint, plax!

in case you didn't know, Zhangke's new documentary film, Swimming Out Until the Sea Turns Blue, is available in America for a $15 rental from October 1 to October 6.
https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2020/films/swimming-out-till-the-sea-turns-blue/

There are two other Jia films on the Criterion Channel that I really need to catch before they're gone.

Will have to dive into those.
Saw most of Born To Kill on tcm and omg---tcm bio of El Tierney ditto: apparently he delighted and freaked out his colleagues for something like another 40 years, incl. on The Simpsons and Seinfeld, where in both (and other) cases he coulda been a regular, but rock on.

Ash Is Purest White is my favorite of his, and one of my favorite films ever, but I also really loved A Touch of Sin.

Platform, Unknown Pleasures, Still Life were also amazing, Platform in particular, being the first film of his that was widely distributed. It was kind of inscrutable with its mid-distance shots and hermetic characters

*Vivre sa Vie (Godard, 1962) - 10/10
The Last Hurrah (Ford, 1958) - 8/10
The Left Hand of God (Dmytryk, 1955) - 7/10
The Wild Goose Lake (Yi’nan, 2019) - 9/10
American Buffalo (Corrente, 1996) - 5/10
*Life is Sweet (Leigh, 1990) - 10/10
Monos (Landes, 2019) - 9/10
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Mazursky, 1969) - 3/10
Play Dirty (De Toth, 1969) - 7/10
The Seduction of Mimi (Wertmüller, 1972) - 8/10
Four Weddings and a Funeral (Newell, 1994) - 2/10
The Naked City (Dassin, 1948) - 9/10
Teenage (Wolf, 2013) - 10/10
The Quiet Earth (Murphy, 1985) - 7/10
Rancho Notorious (Lang, 1952) - 8/10
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Kaufman, 2020) - 6/10
Angel (Lubitsch, 1937) - 8/10
*Lonesome (Fejos, 1928) - 10/10
*Wanda (Loden, 1970) - 10/10
Lawman (Winner, 1971) - 7/10
The Boston Strangler (Fleischer, 1968) - 9/10
Straight Shooting (Ford, 1917) - 8/10
*Morocco (von Sternberg, 1930) - 10/10
*Twentieth Century (Hawks, 1934) - 9/10
*News from Home (Akerman, 1977) - 10/10

and I saw a movie in a movie theater for the first time in nearly 6 months:

Tenet (Nolan, 2020) - 5/10

lol

https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/wife-of-a-spy-review-1234763317/

the latest Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie sounds compelling and is getting a few rave reviews.

it just won Best Director award at Venice

i miss fred b tbh

I just as much miss my bleeding haemorrhoids and early morning headaches.

am looking forward to seeing Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland which was the Golden Lion winner, I really liked her film The Rider

that film wasn't trying to prove anything and it dealt with established film conventions, but it was somehow very powerful and memorable to me

nomadland is the film i've been most looking forward to in 2020 and i've been watching for it closely; premiered at TIFF yesterday. somewhat less enthusiastic about her marvel film but still VERY curious.

Mother and Son (McCarthy, 1931)
Exposure (Houston, 1932)
The Office Scandal (1930)
The Beauties (Davis, 1930)
Tarnished Lady (Cukor, 1931)
Night of the Lepus (Claxton, 1972)
Jus’ Passin’ Through (Chase, 1923
Innocent Husbands (McCarey, 1925)

just fortifying myself before watching the adaptation of The Painted Bird tonight, the mood I'm in there is a good chance I won't make it to the end.

I'm reading the cheerful, romping The Painted Bird for the first in anticipation of the film.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 11 January 2020 15:48 (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know what the book is like but all I'm saying is never watch this movie in its current form, folks...never. The shame is it could have been good without the gratuitous sexual violence and the other stuff, because there was some beguiling imagery and very good actors involved and it could have been much better than this. But as it is the movie needs either some serious cuts or just completely deleting.

lol, that bad huh? i suppose if i want to be brutalized, i can always finally try Come and See

say what you like about Come and See, at least there wasn't no bestiality in it!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/14/the-painted-birds-horror-haneke-von-trier-arthouse

"Marhoul has even given a small part in The Painted Bird to Aleksei Kravchenko, who as a teenager played the shell-shocked lead in Klimov’s picture. Back then, Kravchenko’s face grew more twisted and anguished with each scene, the carnage his character witnessed reflected in the deepening, tear-salted grooves of his rapidly ageing face."

Gilbey is right here that Come and See is rightfully regarded as a classic and this ugly shock-merchant trash should soon be forgotten.