Last (x) movies you saw (II)

In Search of Darkness (2019) 5/10
In Search of Darkness Part II (2020) 6/10

some hooptober movies, although i'm not reviewing them

haunted houses:
House (Miner, 1986) 6/10
Saturday the 14th (1981) 6/10

the worst part 2 I can find: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987) 2/10
kaiju: The Giant Claw (Fred Sears, 1957) 2/10
POC director: Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (Ernest Dickerson, 1995) 4/10
hooper/1981: The Funhouse (Tobe Hooper, 1981) 7/10
00s: Jennifer's Body (2009) 4/10
spain: Pieces (Juan Piquer Simón, 1982) 5/10

Watched In the Earth yesterday; first time I've been able to get through anything by Ben Wheatley.

Roaring Road (Hurst, 1926)
Roadhouse Nights (Henley, 1930)
The Fall of the House of Usher (Epstein, 1928)
The Tell-Tale Heart (Hurst, 1934)
Side Street (Mann, 1950)
The Sound of Fury (Endfield, 1950)
High Tide (Reinhardt, 1947)

Dune
Not helped by the fact that the sun came out and reflected on my tv screen during the darkest bits of this which I must rewatch.
Anyway thought it quite epic and visually stunning and all like that.
Did wonder when the book was written from seeing the military showing off on the arrival of the Altreides and if it was actually something that was seen asa positive by Herbert. Now seen that book published in 1965 not the early 50s I was thinking, but Foundation was written in the early 50s which I had reversed in my head at the time.
Looking forward to seeing part 2. So wonder when it will appear

Ms.45 (Ferrera 1981) 6/10 if taxi driver were even less subtle
Candyman (1992) 4/10
*Se7en (Fincher 1995) 7/10
The Kiss of the Vampire (Don Sharp 1963) 6/10
Halloween Party (1989)
My Bloody Valentine (1981) 5/10 de-censored version
Pontypool (2008) 7/10
Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) 5/10
Sleepaway Camp (1983) 6/10
*Plan 9 from Outer Space (Wood 1957) ed/10
*Re-Animator (Gordon 1985) 8/10 first time watching the uncensored version
Halloween II (1981) 4/10
Train to Busan (2016) 6/10

i am tired of horror movies now

also
No Time to Die (Fukunaga 2021) 7/10

i am tired of horror movies now

The ratings bear that out.

Rat Film (2016) 3.5/5
Dune: Part One 3.5/5
* The Innocents (1961) 4/5
The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) 3/5
* House (1977) 5/5
* To Die For (1995) 3/5
Deep Cover (1992) 4/5. Found out a dialogue sample I first heard on De La Soul's Buhloone Mindstate in 1993 is from this movie.
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) 4/5
The Velvet Underground (2021) 4/5

Settlers (2021) - I don't know, I'm not really a ratings guy, 4/5? A dark (tone - it's lit quite brightly), minimalist sci-fi movie about a family who live all alone on Mars when suddenly some other people show up. There's violence, but it's mostly off camera, and things take several surprising turns. Recommended.

Musty's Vacation (Myll, 1917)
Koko Sees Spooke (Fleischer, 1925)
*Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde (Rock & Pembroke, 1925)
Young Eagles (Bennett, 1934)
The Oval Portrait (1934)
Fancy Curves (Breslow, 1932)
*The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1920)
*Vampyr (Dreyer, 1932)
Last Night in Soho (Wright, 2021)
*Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922)
The French Dispatch (Anderson, 2021)

A View to a Kill (Glen, 1985) 6/10 DVD
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Cretton, 2021) 6/10 CINEMA
Escape in the Fog (Boetticher, 1945) 6/10 BLU-RAY (part of Indicator's Columbia Noir Vol 1 box set)
Venom (Fleischer, 2018) 4/10 TV
Memoria (Weerasethakul, 2021) 8/10 CINEMA
The Velvet Underground (Haynes, 2021) 8/10 CINEMA
The French Dispatch (Anderson, 2021) 7/10 CINEMA
The Undercover Man (Lewis, 1949) 7/10 BLU-RAY (Columbia Noir Vol 1)
Happy Birthday to Me (Thompson, 1981) 7/10 BLU-RAY
Dune (Villeneuve, 2021) 5/10 CINEMA
Man Made Monster (Waggner, 1941) 6/10 BLU-RAY (part of Scream Factory's Universal Horrors Vol 3 set)

As the Earth Turns (Lyford, 1937)
Chinatown After Dark (Paton, 1931)
The Last Warning (Leni, 1928)
*Mabel's Married Life (Sennett, 1914)
*The Masquerader (Chaplin, 1914)
*The Rounders (Chaplin, 1914)
*Dough and Dynamite (Chaplin, 1914)
*The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Ingram, 1921)
*Metropolis (Lang, 1927)
*The General (Keaton & Bruckman)
*Underworld (von Sternberg, 1927)

The Marksman - this year's Liam Neeson movie. Apparently Clint Eastwood turned down the script at some point and it fell in Neeson's lap. He does OK with it but during the big physical fight scene I thought the director should have been charged with elder abuse.

Rolling Stone: Stories from the Edge (6.0)
Fanny: The Right to Rock (6.0)
The Stepford Wives (7.0--if you have to ask, you’ve never seen the remake)
Modern Romance (6.0)
Dune (2021--4.0)
Malcolm & Marie (6.0)
The Velvet Underground (7.5)
The Devil Wears Prada (6.0)
Donnie Darko (7.0)
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (5.5)
Regarding Susan Sontag (8.0)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (7.0)
The French Dispatch (ordeal)
Q&A (5.5)

Gold Diggers of 1933 (LeRoy with Berkeley, 1933) 7/10
Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell, 1936) short
After the Thin Man (WB, "One Take Woody" Van Dyke, 1936) 3/10
The Witches (Hammer ltd, 1966) 5/10
Motel Hell (Kevin Connor, 1980) 7/10 i used preservatives
Junkopia (Marker, 1981) short mentioned by eric as zootopia and then junktopia
Rehearsal for Murder (1982) 4/10 tv movie written by the columbo guys
Halloween H20 (1998) 6/10 fantastic ending. michael myers drops the knife!
Dave Made a Maze (2017) 5/10 looks great but maybe the production guys shouldn't write the script too
Dune (Villeneuve, 2021) 9/10
Last Night in Soho (Edgar Wright, 2021) 6/10 that third act huh

I also finished watching all of Columbo. I guess Falk liked to have McGoohan as a director because he let Falk dick around, even when it made those episodes not make total sense.

Patrick McGoohan in the "By Dawn's Early Light" episode is one of the finest acting performances of the 70s, and I'm not exaggerating even a little bit.

his performance in Agenda for Murder is also very entertaining, even if the episode is a bit of a mess.

Well I watched Titane, yeah that was A Thing. Prolly like 8/10 but I will not be recommending that to anyone I know. Actually that is stayiing with me hours later, bump it up to 9/I10. Powerful shit like.
Then I watched Finch; Tom Hanks, Robot, Duggie, post-apocalyptic blahblahblah, this is right up my street, right? RIGHT?!? Eh whatever, too much robot not enough VGB IMO. Still, charming enough and better than the reviews made out. I dunno, 6/10?
What else did I watch? Shang-Chi: Whatever Subtitle, MCU/10, you know what that was
The VU doc, that was pretty poor for reasons expressed by more more verbose people than me in yon thread 5ish?
Dune was Fucking Amazing and I've got a knife and will (slowly) fight anyone says otherwise NINE

A Simple Plan. 10/10; a perfect movie.

* Con Air (1997) 3.5/5
* Devi (1960) 4.5/5
The White Balloon (1995) 3.5/5. One of the 6 or so of the top 247 movies in the Morbsies poll I hadn't seen. Doesn't have the charm of the very similar Where is the Friend's House?, which tbf is one of the greatest movies ever made.
Hangover Square (1945) 3.5/5
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) 2.5/5. I get a sense from the subject and some of the casting (Nick Cave as H.G. Wells) that the director originally set out to make a more unconventional biopic than this ended up being. This is probably bound to end up getting confused with other Benedict Cumberbatch movies for eternity.
The French Dispatch (2021) 3.5/5
In the Cut (2003) People who want the return of the erotic thriller often elide that this would entail the return of some goofy-ass endings.
* Pulse (2001) 3.5/5 Kinda surprised I found this slightly less effective than when I first saw it years ago.
The Brood (1979) 4/5

SHORTS:
Alone (2017) 3/5 From New York Times-produced web short to Criterion Channel.
Caprice (1986) 3.5/5 Joanna Hogg's aesthetically assured student thesis film with a very early Tilda Swinton appearance (billed here as "Matilda Swinton," in fact)
(nostalgia) 1971

The Lone Defender (Thorpe, 1930)
An Old Man's Love Story (Brooke, 1913)
Miss Lulu Bett (W. DeMille, 1921)
X Marks the Spot (Kenton, 1931)
Tell England (Asquith & Barkas, 1931)
Contented Calves (White, 1934)
Four Square Steve (Laemmle, 1926)
*The Boat (Keaton & Cline, 1921)
*The Goat (Keaton & St. Clair, 1921)
*The Balloonatic (Keaton & Cline, 1923)
*The Signal Tower (Brown, 1924)
Outside the Law (Browning, 1920)
The Man Without a World (Antin, 1991)
The City Without Jews (Breslauer, 1924)

Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch 2013)
Intimate Lighting (Passer 1965)
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Cretton 2021)
No Time to Die (Fukunaga 2021)
The Velvet Underground (Haynes 2021)
Inside Out (Docter, del Carmen, 2015)
Beat Girl (Gréville 1960)
The Dreamer (Rockwell 2012)
Open City Mixtape (2012) shorts by A.V. Rockwell: The Dreamer; Indigo's Smile; Trey; Heist
Niagara (Hathaway 1953)
Eternals (Zhao 2021)
The Innocents (Clayton 1961)
Tshiuetin (Monnet 2016)
The Big Steal (Siegel 1949)
Cure (Kurosawa 1996)
Doctor X (Curtiz 1932)
Drifting Clouds (Kaurismäki 1996)
Boomerang! (Kazan 1947)
Like (Bradley 2016)
Island of Lost Souls (Kenton 1932)
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (McNaughton 1986)
Black Soil, Green Grass (Carbone 2016)
Black Widow (Johnson 1959)
Girlhood (Sciamma 2014)

The Card Counter actually quite great, I UNDERSTAND NOW why yis talk up Oscar Isaac, so expressive just through his eyes. Tiffany Hadddish and the Sheridan kid (who's beefed up somewhat since I last saw him) also good, and hey Willem Dafoe makes the most of his brief screen time. Speaking of whom, this last shot is surely a blatant callback to Light Sleeper? (Which I should've voted high in the Morbsies but forgot, oh well...)

I mean I'm not a fucken heathen, I'm aware the Light Sleeper shot was a Bresson reference, but still

Re-watched Event Horizon, which sent me to Wikipedia to see whether it had originally been shot for 3D exhibition. It had not, but there are a surprising number of shots of things flying directly at the camera for a non-3D movie.

Erotikon (Stiller, 1920)
Cross-Country Cruise (Buzzell, 1934)
Tol'able David (King, 1921)
Find the King (Howe, 1927)
Scrambled Weddings (Barrows, 1928)
*Dad's Choice (Howe, 1928)
*Fatty's Reckless Fling (Arbuckle, 1915)
*Good Night Nurse (Arbuckle, 1918)
*Camping Out (Arbuckle, 1919)
*The Garage (Arbuckle, 1920)
*So This Is Paris (Lubitsch, 1926)
*Won in a Closet (Normand, 1914)
By Might of His Right (Drew, 1915)
*The Village Chestnut (Wright & Griffith, 1918)
*Her First Kiss (Griffin, 1919)
*For Heaven's Sake (Taylor, 1926)

Pharma Bro (6.0)
Spencer (6.0)
So I Married an Axe Murderer (7.0)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (6.5)
Twisted (4.0)
Passing (6.5)
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (7.5)
House of Gucci (5.5)
Dean Martin: King of Cool (6.0)
Magic Shadows, Elwy Yost: A Life in Movies (7.0)

I got through the first episode Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer and bailed a few minutes into the second. Couldn't take one more scene of "And my cell starts beeping at 2:00 in the morning and there's a message that says 'Watch this,' so I opened up the link and I was like 'W...T...F!!!!???'" And then the interviewee will tell you he proceeded to watch the clip six more times.

Nightmare Alley (Goulding, 1947)
Yukon Jake (Lord, 1924)
The Mysterious Mystery! (McGowan, 1924)

I think I saw a lobby poster the other day for a remake of Nightmare Alley.

42nd Street (Bacon/Berkeley, 1933) 7/10 much better than Broadway Melody
Titicut Follies (Wiseman, 1967) 9/10
Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990) 10/10
The Invisible Maniac (1990) 3/10 he kills a guy with a submarine sandwich
Castle Freak (Stuart Gordon, 1995) 4/10 does not tear his ding dong off
Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997) 8/10
Green Room (Saulnier, 2015) 8/10

tv
Penda's Fen (written by David Rudkin, 1974) 7/10
Squid Game (Hwang Dong-hyuk, 2021) 8/10
Midnight Mass (Mike Flanagan, 2021) 8/10
Fear Street 1666 (Janiak, 2021) 7/10
Disney's Fastpass: A Complicated History (the Defunctland guy, 2021)

oooh, i will watch that Fastpass doc!

fans of sbnation chart party videos will probably like that one

nu-Nightmare Alley adap is a Guillermo del Toro joint, screenplay by/with Kim Morgan

nu-Nightmare Alley adap is a Guillermo del Toro joint, screenplay by/with Kim Morgan

― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Sunday, November 28, 2021 10:28 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I watched the 1947 version as part of anticipating the del Toro remake. (The art direction as seen in the trailer is to die for. Whether the rest of the film will live up to that is the question.)

okay the Fastpass doc is maybe the best disney movie of the year and i'm linking it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE

(i wish more podcasts had anywhere near this level of depth and thoughtfulness)

Just been to see Petite Maman. I don't usually get emotional watching films but man I had difficulty holding it together through pretty much the whole thing.

The Last Duel
I finally got a watchable file.
It looks impressive at least.
Villanelle in another role having her honour defended by Matt Damon. & Adam Driver being an ego driven cad.
I think I heard a Media Eval on this a couple of months ago talking about some anachronisms including there not being any more crusades around the time.

November:

Fast Company (Cronenberg, 1979) 6/10 AMAZON PRIME
Censor (Bailey-Bond, 2021) 6/10 MUBI
Les Bonnes Femmes (Chabrol, 1960) 9/10 MUBI
Squirm (Lierberman, 1976) 6/10 DVD
The Queen of Spades (Dickinson, 1949) 7/10 DVD
The Blue Dahlia (Marshall, 1946) 8/10 DVD
*Carry on Don't Lose Your Head (Thomas, 1966) 5/10 DVD
*Carry on Cowboy (Thomas, 1965) 6/10 DVD
Maniac (Lustig, 1980) 7/10 DVD
Alone in the Dark (Sholder, 1982) 7/10 DVD
Eternals (Zhao, 2021) 3/10 CINEMA
The Violent Professionals (Martino, 1973) 7/10 BLU-RAY
*Dirty Harry (Siegel, 1971) 8/10 DVD
Petite Maman (Sciamma, 2021) 8/10 CINEMA
Drive My Car (Hamaguchi, 2021) 8/10 CINEMA
Magnum Force (Post, 1973) 7/10 DVD
The Enforcer (Fargo, 1976) 6/10

Over the Edge (1979)

SO much fun. Sorta can't believe the cop getting gunmurdered at the end is played off as lightly as it is. I'm remodeling my whole personality based on Claude.

Out of Singapore (Hutchison, 1932)
That Goes Double (Henabery, 1933)
The Lost Jungle (Schaefer & Howard, 1934)
Ella Cinders (Green, 1926)
Hawthorne of the U.S.A. (Cruze, 1919)
Come on Danger! (Hill, 1932)
The Hand of God (Sorrentino, 2021)

Forever Prisoner Alex Gibney
harrowing documentary about Guantanamo Bay detainee of 20 years Abu Zubaydah,
Or possibly more about the network of lies and deception about why he has been imprisoned for 2 decades without a trial and tortured for no good reason since the process of torture is not a good way of extracting information from an individual. it is a good way of making somebody manual to say what teh torturer wants to try to stop the torture continuing, or rather what teh person thinks the torturer wants.
& it struck me while watching this and listening to the podcast earlier today that talked about this film being broadcast last night, that Francis Bacon talked about this problem in the 16th century. So it has been known since then that the information extracted is not going to be reliable.
Some of teh people employed by the US for this process who have actually come forward to be interviewed for this film appear to be soulless because they went ahead and applied techniques they were supposedly showing how to survive to another human being. I think this may leave you feeling a palpable sense of disgust

I was just reading about that and both do and don't want to watch it. Everything about Guantanamo Bay makes me so angry and frustrated, but I seem to always watch and read a fair bit about it - I guess trying to (impossibly) makes sense of the whole terribleness.

That Uncertain Feeling (1941) 4/5
* Get Carter (1971) 4/5
The Beatles: Get Back 4/5
The Power of the Dog (2021) 3.5/5
* Shadow of a Doubt (1943) 4.5/5
* Dune (IMAX; 2021) 4/5
Lights in the Dusk (2006) 3/5
Pig (2021) 3.5/5
* Point Blank (1967) 4.5/5
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts (2021) 5/5
The Night of the Iguana (1964) 3.5/5
I Wake Up Screaming (1941) 3.5/5

Good list and ratings!

World War Z drifted across my radar and I'd basically forgotten it existed (though I liked the book) so I watched. It was one of the most inept, pointless movies I've ever seen. Complete misunderstanding of the source material, zero logic even within the parameters of its own story, not one interesting performance... just two hours of staring into the void.

Film is similar to A Perfect Storm in that it takes a source material that is varied anecdotal and tries to make it into an overarching narrative with one group in focus. Film may be most outstanding for having Capaldi in as a WHO Doctor just before he was announced to be Dr Who. Otherwise trying too hard to make something Hollywood friendly out of a book that handles narrative in a non traditional way.
Human ramps of zombies may be the one image from the film that might stick with one too.
I still haven't managed to get hold of the other Zombie book by the same author which seemed like it might be fun. I think its how to survive a Zombie Attack but hopefully has further backstory to various things.

Cronos (del Toro, 1993)
Geometry (del Toro, 1987)
Ma’s Pride and Joy (Pearce, 1932)
My Cousin from Warsaw (Gallone, 1931)
Raise the Rent (Newmeyer, 1920)
A Muddy Romance (Sennett, 1913)
Sherlock's Home (St. Clair, 1924)

xp mel brooks' kid!

Enough (5.0)
Spotlight (6.0)
The Ernie Game (7.0)
Notes for a Film About Donna and Gail (6.5)
American Hustle (7.0)
Christopher’s Movie Matinee (5.0)
The Power of the Dog (6.5)
The Rainmaker (6.5)
You’re a Big Boy Now (5.5)
C’mon C’mon (6.0)

Have to give some thought to C’mon C’mon. I thought it was an okay follow-up to 20th Century Women, but I was on the outside looking in the whole way...Recommend Claude Jutra's Notes for a Film About Donna and Gail (1966) to cryptosicko; basically a blueprint for Goin' Down the Road.

(You can watch the latter on YouTube or the NFB site.)