Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Shimizu, 1933) - 8/10
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra, 1936) - 9/10
King Creole (Curtiz, 1958) - 6/10
*Don’t Look Now (Roeg, 1973) - 9/10
*Three Colors: White (Kieślowski, 1994) - 10/10
*Three Colors: Red (Kieślowski, 1994) - 9/10
*Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958) - 8/10
*Blow Out (De Palma, 1981) - 10/10
Clueless (Heckerling, 1995) - 10/10
Kajillionaire (July, 2020) - 9/10
*I Married a Witch (Clair, 1942) - 9/10
All I Desire (Sirk, 1953) - 8/10
*The Lady from Shanghai (Welles, 1948) - 8/10
*They All Laughed (Bogdanovich, 1981) - 10/10

I made plans to watch They All Laughed tonight with a friend (simultaneously, on an opposite coast). I got the news about Morbs from Ray when I was on the phone with her. Before I hung up I told her what Morbs said about They All Laughed: "Watched the first 20 minutes of They All Laughed last night. I didn't."

I was planning on making this post to get him to harangue me for ranking Touch of Evil and Lady from Shanghai higher than They All Laughed, or giving Blow Out a 10. I miss him. I want to talk about Ford and Fassbinder again. I want to be harangued. I wanted to learn more from him.

i just discovered Yuri Ancarani and whoa. Here's a cam copy of his outrageous Da Vinci; seeing it on the big screen would be next level but the first five minutes of this even in diminished format had me screaming at my television.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cBoqgJfyXw

last few:
shock corridor - fuller 196? aggressively crass, not as brilliantly deranged as the naked kiss but amazing how relentlessly offensive it was

beyond the secret door (?) - lang 1948 - daft psychoanalysis plot that gets more and more ludicrous. Joan bennett is hilarious in this and I bet it was pretty fabulous to hang out on the set of this. I kept thinking 'what on earth is happening' but it all made its own sense

knives out - someone 2019 - toni colette is very funny and i barely recognised anyone else but sensed you were meant to enjoy them all mugging out of character. i was hungover and my bf suggested we watch something as dumb as like pitch perfect 2 or something and this fitted the bill

platform - jia zhangke 2000 - this was so deeply moving to me. weirdly reminded me of being a teenager more than almost any other film i know. The scene where he suddenly starts singing the rock song and then they run to watch the train. was worried about watching after seeing ash is purest which, in case it was a letdown but I loved this even more. keep thinking about it and its weeks now since i watched it. the last few scenes. my god.

bright eyes - stuart marshall 1984 - this was so boring. historical interest only

unknown pleasures - jia zhangke - this was harsher than the others i've seen by him, but had the best zhao tao performance.

ace in the hole - wilder - ???? - this film was not nearly as clever as it thought it was. was pretty bored by the end. the moralism the predicability. i read the wikipedia article about roy cohn on my phone during it

love is colder than death - fassbinder - was actually surprised at how this was literally him 'doing' breathless. hannah schuygulla was hot in it tho

weekend - godard - 196? my bf was very 'what was that?' and i think i said something about cinema destroying itself lol so i think it was pretty stupid.

Murder on the Campus (Thorpe, 1933)
Lost In Limehouse (Brower, 1933)
High Treason (silent version, Elvey, 1929)
The Return of Chandu (Taylor, 1934)
Satanic Rhapsody (Oxilia, 1917)
Riley the Cop (Ford, 1928)
Halloween (Huemer & Marcus, 1931)
The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge (Clair, 1925)
Now We're in the Air (surviving fragments, Strayer, 1927)
Mighty Joe Young (Schoedsack, 1949)
Circus Clowns (Hibbard, 1922?)
The Kid Reporter (Goulding, 1923)
Deviled Crabs (Burns & Stull, 1917)
Local Showers (Myll, 1916)
*The Haunted House (Keaton & Cline, 1921)

*Lost in America (Brooks, 1985)
The Deep (Yates, 1977)
*Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968)
Destination Murder (Cahn, 1950)
David Byrne's American Utopia (Lee, 2020)
The Killers (Siegel, 1964)
*Suspiria (Argento, 1977)
Macao (von Sternberg, 1952)
*Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922)
Shivers (Cronenberg, 1975)

My daughter actually requested we finish the OG "Dawn of the Dead," which I chalk up to the likable characters. Last night we watched "Diabolique," which she loved. As she said, she guessed the twist, but only after the movie had moved so close to the end where it was even possible to do so.

October:

The Blue Gardenia (Lang, 1953) 7/10
The Grapes of Death (Rollin, 1978) 8/10
All the Colours of the Dark (Martino, 1972) 8/10
The Haunted Palace (Corman, 1963) 7/10
Cisco Pike (Norton, 1972) 9/10 - beautiful new blu-ray of this from Indictaor
The Man With the Golden Gun (Hamilton, 1974) 5/10
The Honeymoon Killers (Kastle, 1970) 9/10
The Flesh and Blood Show (Walker, 1972) 5/10
Satan's Slave (Warren, 1976) 6/10
The Void (Gillespie, Kostanski 2016) 6/10
The Hands of Orlac (Greville, 1960) 5/10 - 'continental' version, including Christopher Lee commandingly delivering all his dialogue in French
The Tall Men (Walsh, 1955) 7/10
The Paleface (McLeod, 1948) 7/10
Underworld U.S.A. (Fuller, 1961) 8/10
Stage Fright: Aquarius (Soavi, 1987) 7/10
The Infernal Cakewalk (Melies, 1903)
Creature from the Black Lagoon (Arnold, 1954) 7/10
Steamboat Bill, Jr (Keaton, Reisner 1928) 9/10 - Morbs Memorial Viewing
Lemon (Frampton, 1969) 8/10
Pursued (Walsh, 1947) 7/10 - stunning James Wong Home cinematography - I don't think of Walsh primarily as a visual stylist, but both this and The Tall Men are very beautiful films
Mark of the Devil (Armstrong, 1970) 7/10
Run ('Luther Price', 1994) 8/10
The Premonition (Schnitzer, 1976) 6/10
Shock Waves (Wiederhorn, 1977) 5/10

Summer of ’85 (Ozon, 2020) 7/10
Days (Tsai, 2020) 8/10
The Trial of the Chicago 7(Sorkin, 2020) 4/10
Martin Eden (Marcello, 2020) 6/10
Homicide (Mamet, 1990) 6/10
Matewan (Sayles, 1987) 6/10
Christ stopped at Eboli (Rosi, 1979) 7/10

It's been a lot of television this month as my attention span has been lessened by, oh, everything.

Great (non-2020):
* Il Capo (Ancarani, 2010)
What a revelation! I'll need to watch all of this guy's work now

* Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever (1983)
The first televised moonwalk, amazing Diana Ross pettiness, Richard Pryor winging it, The Temptations and the Four Tops battling, Marvin Gaye at the end... there's basically no end to the amazingness on this two hour special and you should watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPsfsyi1bvs

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
*Shithouse (2020, Raiff)
This was fine; maybe a bit more at the center than the description suggests. The writer/director/lead is clearly a talented kid and I'm curious to see where he goes from here.

*Mandibles (2020, Dupeiux)
Dupieux's dark sense of humor feels best tempered to me when he's not taking himself too seriously or asking the audience to pretend that anything we're watching requests our empathy. His zanies here bring into play some of the pure dumbness of the Coen brothers best anti-heroes and (maybe moreso than some of his other mcguffins) the winged prize at its center maintains a delectable air of pure dada without putting a strain on the antics. Maybe my fave of his work that I've seen thus far.

*Love and Monsters (2020, Matthews)
A semi-throwback post-apocalypse lone hero movie with predictable and reasonably enjoyable beats throughout. Good monster design, mostly unembarrassing dialogue and lots of time to check your phone or get popcorn without feeling like the film was unnecessarily padded gave this some necessary goodwill. I was less enthusiastic about the projection-ready grandiose mythical beta neet who just needs to be tested to rise to his full superheroic potential and show everyone the way out of bondage. "Get out and impose your white boy will on the world regardless of how dangerous or useful your influence might be" is a tiresome drum to beat under the best of times; in the COVID-era it feels outrageously tin-eared, if not foolhardy and dangerous.

*Long Gone Summer (2020)
The last time baseball was kinda interesting imo.

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
*The Donut King (2020, Gu)
Suffers from being overlong and from empathizing too much with its lead, but it's a hell of a story about immigrants in America and how capitalism in the 80's could still be overthrown by grass roots determination.

*First Cow (2020, Reichardt)
I think it's my own fault for not liking this more: I stupidly chopped up the viewing into two pieces and mucked up Reichardt's glacial but always intentional flow. Besides that the inevitable slide into violence combined with the dreamlike pace was just too nerve-wracking for my COVID-damaged psyche. Watching this on a television within range of a pause button was a bit of a fool's errand. I'll come back to this and try again in a few years, god-willing when her next film comes out and when I get to see this in theaters.

*Save Yourselves (2020, Wilson and Fischer)
Well observed but ultimately as fluffy and unrevealing as the puffs themselves. Slacker metaphor becomes slacker sci-fi philosophy.

No:
*12 Hour Shift (2020, Grant)
Waaaaay too dumb to even begin to take seriously and, sadly, neither accomplished or gonzo enough to provide worthwhile cheap thrills. Runs out of steam almost entirely in the third reel, leading to a number of particularly poorly filmed sequences and absurdly enacted plot points. Notable almost solely for Bettis, who is doing her best to carry the whole thing on her back. She doesn't succeed, but it's not for lack of trying.

*What the Constitution Means to Me (2020, Heller)
Disappointing editing/direction here; lots of cut-aways to audience shots to inform the viewer how they're meant to react to each line. Stops the viewer from engaging in the actual theater going on and continually reminds me of the disconnect. Makes me wish I could've seen this pre-COVID live; the monologue itself is pretty strong and well delivered.

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde (Rock & Pembroke, 1925)
Fascination (Mander, 1931)
The Telltale Heart (Shamroy & Klein, 1928)
Mabel's Strange Predicament (Normand, 1914)
The Flame Song (Henabery, 1934)
*The Infernal Cauldron (Melies, 1903)
The Infernal Cakewalk (Melies, 1903)
*Frankenstein (Dawley, 1910)
Satan in Prison (Melies, 1907)
The Moonstone (Barker, 1934)
Burn ’Em Up Barnes (Schaefer, 1934)
*Menu (Grinde, 1933)
Les Patineurs (Melies, 1908)
The Sorrows of Satan (Griffith, 1926)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Neill, 1943)
Dos Monjes (Bustillo Oro, 1934)

Home (Meier, 2008)
Amateur (Hartley, 1994)
Salon Kitty (Brass, 1976)
Cure (Kurosawa, 1997)
Le Navine Night (Duras, 1979)
Still the Water (Kawase, 2014)

An Unmarried Woman (Mazursky, 1978) - 5/10
Mister Roberts (Ford, LeRoy; 1955) - 6/10
Missing (Gavras, 1982) - 8/10
*The Searchers (Ford, 1956) - 10/10
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Waititi, 2016) - 3/10
The French Connection (Friedkin, 1971) - 7/10
*Just Before Nightfall (Chabrol, 1971) - 9/10
*She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Ford, 1949) - 9/10
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Woliner, 2020) - 7/10
House of Bamboo (Fuller, 1955) - 8/10
The Gambler (Reisz, 1974) - 8/10
Hi, Mom! (De Palma, 1970) - 6/10
*Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965) - 10/10
The Big Heat (Lang, 1953) - 8/10
Out of the Blue (Hopper, 1980) - 8/10
The Fury (De Palma, 1978) - 7/10
The Eroticist (Fulci, 1972) - 8/10
Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968) - 10/10
The Contender (Lurie, 2000) - 2/10
Phenomena (Argento, 1985) - 9/10
Malibu High (Berwick, 1979) - 6/10
Appassionata (Calderone, 1974) - 9/10
*Brewster McCloud (Altman, 1970) - 6/10
*Nashville (Altman, 1975) - 10/10
*Les Bonnes Femmes (Chabrol, 1960) - 9/10
*Fear of Fear (Fassbinder, 1975) - 9/10
*Night and Fog (Resnais, 1956) - 10/10
The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940) - 10/10
Girlfriends (Weill, 1978) - 10/10 <--------------------------Extraordinary film
*Chinese Roulette (Fassbinder, 1976) - 9/10
Murder by Contract (Lerner, 1958) - 8/10
*It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934) - 10/10
The Kennel Murder Case (Curtiz, 1933) - 7/10
The Immortal Story (Welles, 1968) - 8/10
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (Curtiz, 1939) - 8/10
On the Rocks (Coppola, 2020) - 9/10

(Waititi, 2016) - 3/10

have you seen / liked Boy or What We Do In The Shadows?

No, just Hunt & Jojo. Probably my least favorite active filmmaker

That’s too mild—I think he’s atrocious

Fwiw he did the only Marvel movie I didn’t outright loathe.

I'm honestly fine with anyone giving Hunt and Jojo 3/10, but Thor and Shadows are great fun.

idk if you'd like either of Boy or Shadows, especially if you'd bring a distaste for the whimsy elements of his work along, but they're far better than Hunt and Jojo.

there may come a time... Strong dislike always demands reevaluation

Claudia Weill's Girlfriends is amazing though, look out for that when Criterion puts it out / puts it on the channel. It's like a Chabrol movie, way more dark (atmospherically) than most NYC 1970s movies, despite the relatively light setup. Felt really European, besides being in 1:66.

Girlfriends is great. Watched for the first time a year or two ago and left a lasting impression.

Girlfriends is an excellent movie.

What We Do and Shadows (okay though i'm much preferring the series), Boy (pretty solid throughout) and Thor (absolute top notch fun comic book stuff) are the Waititi I've seen.

Just scored a copy of the FOURTEEN HOUR Women Make Film documentary series so that may guide my watching for awhile.

Show Me The Picture
Biography of Jim Marshall which was on Sky Arts last night.
Great picture fo a photographer I was already aware of and have several books by mainly on 60s and early 70s rock people.
He documented Monterey, Haight Ashbury and the Stones.
Good film worth catching if you get the chance.

Before that I tried watching a boot of Tenet a week or so ago but couldn't hear the dialogue so gave up.

Isn’t muffled dialogue standard for a Christopher Nolan movie.

I wish it were more muffled

Lol

The Tempest (Siodmak, 1932)
*The Village Chestnut (Wright & Griffith, 1918)
Only Me (Lane, 1929)
The Broken Butterfly (Tourneur, 1919)
Eleven P.M. (Maurice, 1928)
Womanhandled (La Cava, 1925)
Them! (Douglas, 1954)
Loose Change (Beaudine, 1928)
*Versus Sledge Hammers (Clements, 1915)
*The Immigrant (Chaplin, 1917)

I'm only 3/4 through 'On the Rocks' but had to say something because I'm loving it

On the Rocks (Coppola, 2020) - 9/10

― flappy bird, Saturday, November 7, 2020 3:03 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

my man. I sort of unconsciously started it and thought to myself "wtf am I doing?" What a delight.

Soooo good. Like a classic screwball comedy. Carole Lombard could've played the Rashida part. Loved it

pretty great NYC movie as well

I haven't posted on this thread since June but here's the best movies I've seen since then

The Passenger (Antonioni, 1975)
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (Lee, 2016)
World On A Wire (Fassbinder, 1973)
Country (Eyre, 1981)
Pauline at the Beach (Rohmer, 1983)
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Ross Brothers, 2020)
Bacurau (Filho, 2019)

Up for Murder (Bell, 1931)
The Vanishing Shadow (Landers, 1934)
The Girl in 419 (Hall, 1933)
Journey’s End (Whale, 1930)
Kiss and Make-Up (Thompson, 1934)
Illegal (McGann, 1932)
Tumultes (Siodmak, 1932)
*Teddy at the Throttle (Badger, 1917)
*Papa's Boy (Taurog, 1927)
Corruption (Roberts, 1933)

absolutely baffled how anyone could do anything but laugh at how terrible On The Rocks was. a good new york movie? if you're into the tightly circumscribed habits of rich tribeca fuckheads, i guess. my wife and i put it on last night because of the novelty of having a PS4 app for our (free) AppleTV subscription, and hey, rashida jones. bill murray! but... oh my god. we kept with it because the movie kept promising a payoff. when it came we were like, no. we turned to each other. no! are they really doing this?? this is...... it?? there isn't a B-plot. there's nothing. i will give coppola credit that the photography is outstanding. but everything else... my god. absolutely zero chemistry between the wife and husband (who is written as a monumental douchebag, regardless of his fidelity or not, so any happy reconciliation between them feels totally slimy). jones seemingly existing to tee up murray to deliver totally snoozeful theories about biology as destiny. and to fret in her zillion dollar tribeca apartment about whether she'll ever make progress on her 'book' - what's it about, who knows, who cares. they're all just so hateful, the stakes are so low, murray totally phones it in. just pitiful. sub-beginner level filmmaking.

i can only guess that the reason it got made is that after lost in translation murray told coppola he'd do anything else she asked. this was it, and murray's involvement guaranteed investors. otherwise it's just.. it's gobsmacking

Journey's End
which was quite moving.
interplay between men in the trenches in WWI.
Probably because i t was Remembrance Day weekend, I think this was Saturday night.

Red Sparrow
which I was thinking of watching since I hadn't seen it before.
Russian intrigue with an ex ballerina.
Caught most of it in a +1 channel.
Nowhere near as good. so glad i watched Journey's End through

Legend of the Mountain (1979) 4/5
* The Servant (1963) 4.5/5
* Girlfriends (1978) 3.5/5
The Color of Money (1986) 3/5
Demons (1985) 3.5/5
The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015) 3/5
In Fabric (2018) 3.5/5
* The Parallax View (1974) 4/5
Haxan (1922) 3/5
Black Christmas (1974) 3.5/5
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) 3/5
The Velvet Vampire (1971) 3/5

Shorts:
The Barbershop (1933) 3.5/5
The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933) 3/5
The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980) 3.5/5
Street of Crocodiles (1986) 4/5
575 Castro Street (2009) 3.5/5
Blue Diary (1997) 3.5/5

I grew up in tribeca so yes xxp

i'm kinda with Tracer, but i only lasted 15 minutes so i don't feel like i have much room to jump in and complain.

I'm a big Coppola defender - I like almost all of her movies, including The Beguiled - but this new one just looks like complete garbage.

Watched two space horror movies this weekend: Sputnik (Russia, 2020) and The Last Days on Mars (US, 2013). Both very good. Sputnik is on Hulu, The Last Days on Mars is free on Amazon Prime.

*Three Days of the Condor (Pollack, 1975) - 8/10
Obsession (De Palma, 1976) - 9/10
Tenebrae (Argento, 1982) - 9/10
Bodyguard (Fleischer, 1948) - 7/10
Parenthood (Howard, 1989) - 0/10
Two Rode Together (Ford, 1961) - 6/10
*Cléo from 5 to 7 (Varda, 1962) - 8/10
This is the Army (Curtiz, 1943) - 8/10
The Servant (Losey, 1963) - 7/10
Brute Force (Dassin, 1947) - 9/10
La Grande Bouffe (Ferreri, 1973) - 10/10
Rooster Cogburn (Millar, 1975) - 6/10
10 Rillington Place (Fleischer, 1971) - 7/10
*Pioneers in Ingolstadt (Fassbinder, 1971) - 9/10
Time Bandits (Gilliam, 1981) - 7/10
Dodge City (Curtiz, 1939) - 7/10
*Beau Travail (Denis, 1999) - 8/10
Blind Date (Losey, 1959) - 5/10
The Shootist (Siegel, 1976) - 8/10
*Sisters (De Palma, 1973) - 9/10
*Election (Payne, 1999) - 10/10
Greetings (De Palma, 1968) - 8/10
The Psychic (Fulci, 1977) - 8/10
Vampyros Lesbos (Franco, 1971) - 6/10

Parenthood (Howard, 1989) - 0/10

Here's where I have my Ebert hat on about "is it as good as a movie of its type could be?" to which in this case I unequivocally say hell yes.

the movie kept promising a payoff

I posted about the Coppola film a few weeks ago. I didn't think it was inept, but yeah, it just didn't go anywhere at all. (The big father-daughter confrontation almost felt like Coppola was aware of that too and tried to gin up something--though I did wonder if Jones was airing specific grievances Sofia harbored towards her own father.) Bill Murray used to surprise regularly, now he plays Bill Murray; Jones was very good in her small Social Network role--capturing her character's arm's-length sympathy for Zuckerberg--but to me didn't have anywhere near enough presence to carry the movie.

Parenthood (Howard, 1989) - 0/10

Here's where I have my Ebert hat on about "is it as good as a movie of its type could be?" to which in this case I unequivocally say hell yes.

― On average, this critic grades 8.3 points lower than other critics (Eric H.), Tuesday, November 17, 2020 4:22 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

You're right, but this specific type of family film is something I find not only bad but objectionable and malicious at every level. Poison.

Haven't seen it since 1989, but on memory I'd at least give it 1/10 for Keanu in goofy teen mode.

In practice I found Parenthood the vulgar American equivalent of an Ozu comedy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Obviously not remotely the hill I’m willing to die on, tho.

The cultural & language barrier cannot be understated but I could see that. My problems with Parenthood are with the kind of film it is, and how it promotes and reinforces malignant American family dynamics, even as it lightly criticizes some of them (the Rick Moranis character, for example). As you said, it's the A1 version of this type of movie, great cast and competently made as almost everything Howard has done is competently made (I don't mean that as an insult, I think he gets ragged on too often). I just find the specific relationships, dynamics, and values it presents and promotes as hideous and damaging and disgusting.

Agree on Keanu tho

Phantasm (Coscarelli, 1979) - 4/5
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper, 1973) 5/5
Rabid (Cronenberg, 1978) 4/5
Shivers (Cronenberg, 1975) 3/5
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (Hancock, 1971) 4/5
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978) 3.5/5

Ash is Purest White (Zhangke, 2018) 4.5/5
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977) 4/5
Beau Travail (Denis, 1999) 4.5/5

Rabid, Close Encounters and Texas Chainsaw were rewatches, though it'd been decades. TCM actually surprised me at how scary it still was. Visceral, sticky, sweaty...from what I read the conditions were rough during filming; it comes across. Also mobiles out of human bones. Rabid seemed like a more refined version of Shivers, fewer straggly threads and tighter editing. Body Snatchers was missing something. Maybe it was a plot? Or that they kept hiding under stairs? I felt like the tension could have been ramped up far better and Nimoy was wasted. Awesome effects, though. Also Donald Sutherland's creamy voice sometimes bugs me.

Phantasm was a pleasant surprise...excellent atmosphere, the tall man was chilling and great fx.

oh, I thought you gave Phantasm a negative 4 out of 5 lol