Last (x) movies you saw (II)

the snakes on a plane guy

the Fast Five guy and the Bone guy!

regarding ACL, I am unfamiliar with the stage musical which probably helped my opinion of the film.

While it streams on Criterion, is there any reason why A Chorus Line would be worth a watch for someone who isn't immediately moved by the promise of "Michael Douglas in a Broadway musical adaptation from the director of Gandhi?"

THE BETA TEST, the latest Jim Cummings thing.

"I am INWINCIBLE!" And something about the password being a chair. You sit on but you can't take it with you. It doesn't make sense. It sounds as if it should be rude but isn't.

I was surprised to find out he ended up directing a big chunk of Bohemian Rhapsody. That's a big step up from Edd the Duck. "Mr Flibble's very cross". You know, I remember deliberately not watching *Ghostwatch* because I didn't realise it was a drama. I thought it was going to be an actual live broadcast about ghosts with Craig McLachlan. It just didn't appeal to me at all. And so I missed the chance to see Russell Harty possessed by a demon. I still kick myself for that.

xp my answer's no

Phil Tippett's Mad God, an absolute marvel

M Butterfly (Cronenberg, 1993) 8/10
Through A Glass Darkly (Bergman, 1963) 8/10
What Am I Doing This?: A Film About Touring (Fundingsland, 2021) 6/10
Autumn Sonata (Bergman, 1978) 10/10
Hour Of The Wolf (Bergman, 1968) 8/10
*Shock Corridor (Fuller, 1963) 8/10
Winter Light (Bergman, 1963) 7/10
Pleasure (Thyberg, 2021) 6/10
Dashcam (Savage, 2021) 8/10
Murder Death Koreatown (anonymous, 2020) 6/10

xpost Looking forward to watching this but feel I need to be ... ready.

I'm tempted to go see it again tonight while it's still on the big screen.

There's a sequence close to the beginning which feels like a living Bosch painting. Just a huge amount of creativity.

Spring 2022...

Ascension (Jessica Kingdon, 2021)
Belfast (Kenneth Branagh, 2021)
Native Son (Pierre Chenal, 1951)
Central Park (Frederick Wiseman, 1989)
On the Bridge (Frank Perry, 1992)
The Straight Story (David Lynch, 1999)
Mahalia Jackson: The Power and the Glory (Jeff Scheftel, 1997)
Missile (Frederick Wiseman, 1988)
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)
Red Rocket (Sean Baker, 2021)
Sisters with Transistors (Lisa Rovner, 2020)
Marutai no onna (Jûzô Itami, 1997)
Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)
Look Away (Sophie Cunningham, 2021)
The Funeral (Jûzô Itami, 1984)
The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
The Pelican Brief (Alan J. Pakula, 1993)
National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, 2014)
Rubber Band Pistol (Jûzô Itami, 1962)
In Dog Years (Sophy Romvari, 2019)
Minamata (Andrew Levitas, 2020)
Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
Shane (George Stevens, 1953)
Great Communist Bank Robbery (Alexandru Solomon, 2004)
It Came From Aquarius Records (Kenneth Thomas, 2022)
For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close (Heather Ross, 2020)
*The Limey (Steven Soderbergh, 1999)
Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon (Yukio Noda, 1977)
Nimic (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2019)
Extraterrestrial (Nacho Vigalondo, 2011)
Wild Gunman (Craig Baldwin, 1978)
Navalny (Daniel Roher, 2022)

Possibly apocryphal story, but supposedly the copy of On The Bridge was digitized directly from Lindsay Anderson's own VHS tape. Caught up on a couple of films I really should have seen but never got around to. Ascension prob my fave of all of these.

doh! "*" on The Straight Story of course.

The Three From the Filling Station (Thiele, 1930)
*Hotel Anchovy (Christie, 1934)
The Black Abbot (Cooper, 1934)
The Pearl (d'Ursel, 1929)
There Goes the Bride (de Courville, 1932)
Public Stenographer (Callins, 1934)
Lonesome (Fejos, 1928)
Green Eyes (Thorpe, 1934)

Crimes of The Future (Cronenberg, 2022) 8/10
The Sadness (Jabbaz, 2021) 6/10
Hana-Bi (Kitano, 1997) 6/10
*The Harder They Come (Henzell, 1972) 7/10
The Image Book (Godard, 2018) 5/10
Men (Garland, 2022) 4/10

Red Ensign (Powell, 1934)
Friday the Thirteenth (Saville, 1933)
Lightnin' (Ford, 1925)
Everything All at Once (Daniels, 2022)
Attack of the Puppet People (Gordon, 1958)
Lumiere d'Ete (Gremillion, 1943)

Viewing way down in 2022.

The Batman (Reeves 2022)
Drive My Car (Hamaguchi 2021)
Please Hold (Davila 2021)
Suicide Squad (Gunn 2021)
Million Dollar Legs (Cline 1932)
The Cocoanuts (Florey, Santley 1929)
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (Hara 1974)
*Miller's Crossing (Coen 1990)
Black Belt Jones (Clouse 1974)
The Rise & Fall of the Clash (Garcia 2012)
Memoria (Weerasethakul 2021)
The Northman (Eggers 2022)
Motian in Motion (Kelly 2020)
Ladies' Man (Mendes 1931)
Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Raimi 2022)
Fire Music (Surgal 2021)
What is man and what is guitar? (Burnett 2021)
Chan Is Missing (Wang 1982)
Good Luck To You, Leo Grande (Hyde 2022)
Possessor (B. Cronenberg 2020)
The Hole (Tsai 1998)
Foreign Intrigue (Reynolds 1956)

*Penda's Fen (Clarke, 1974) 10/10
Mr Klein (Losey, 1976) 8/10
I Love You, Daddy (CK, 2017) 4/10
*Repo Man (Cox, 1984) 8/10
Elvis (Luhrmann, 2021) 7/10
La Notte (Antonioni, 1961) 7/10
The Passion of Anna (Bergman, 1969) 9/10

Party Husband (Badger, 1931)
Breaking Even (Scotto, 1932)
Two A.M. (Cozine, 1931)
Via Express (Bretherton, 1931)
Torchy's Loud Spooker (Burr, 1933)
Techno-crazy (Lamont, 1933)
*The Deadly Mantis (Juran, 1957)
*Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Mamoulian, 1931)

Re-watched Sexy Beast last night for the first time in 20 years. (It's streaming on Hulu.) Haaaaated it back then — just found Kingsley's character, whom everyone's supposed to be terrified of, annoying, like a dog who wouldn't stop barking. Didn't love it now but was fascinated by all the layers of sexual anxiety and trauma and guilt and revulsion that I hadn't paid attention to back then. The male characters are all basically boiling cauldrons of (at least)half-queer self-loathing, except for the protagonist, and his unflappable heterosexuality seems to drive the others berserk.

I saw Penda's Fen for the first time last year. Quite something, despite the BBC budget.

I didn't know who Jonathan Glazer was when he made Sexy Beast and I hardly remember it, but in retrospect after Birth and Under the Skin I'm interested in watching it again

A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) 4/5
* Depeche Mode: 101 (1989) 4.5/5
The Worst Person in the World (2021) 4/5
Beyond The Visible - Hilma af Klint (2019) 3/5
Libeled Lady (1936) 3.5/5
The Shout (1978) 3.5/5
Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe (2022) 3/5
The Bridges of Madison County (1995) 4/5
* Goodfellas (1990) 5/5
A Cry in the Dark (1988) 3/5

Also, a short:
Thing from the Factory Behind the Field (2002) 2.5/5

Watched a bit of "The Fugitive" last night. Was that movie one of if not the first example of big-budget IP mining translating to both box office success and Oscar prestige? "Based on the bestseller" movies aside?

Night Birds (Eichberg, 1930)
Hold 'Em Yale (Griffith, 1928)
Lightning Bill (Adamson, 1934)
Hell-Fire Austin (Sheldon, 1932)
Prize Puppies (Goulding, 1930)
Oh Darling! (Roberts, 1930)
The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom (Zhelyabuzhsky, 1934)
Thor: Love and Thunder (Waititi, 2022)
Curse of the Swamp Creature (Buchanan, 1968)
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris (Fabian, 2022)

Don't Give Up (Watson, 1930)
The House Where I Was Born (Watson, 1934)
Soft Pedal (Grey, 1926)
*Matrimony's Speed Limit (Guy Blache, 1913)
The Campus Vamp (Edwards, 1928)
Britannia of Billingsgate (Hill, 1933)
Manhattan Madness (Dwan, 1916)
Wild and Woolly (Emerson, 1917)
Both Sides of the Blade (Denis, 2022)
*The Student of Prague (Rye, 1913)

*Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (Peckinpah, 1973) 8/10
A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Jee-woon, 2003) 5/10
Watership Down (Rosen, 1978) 8/10
Mountains May Depart (Zhangke, 2015) 6/10
The Many Saints of Newark (Taylor, 2021) 5/10
Modern Romance (Brooks, 1981) 8/10
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982) 8/10

Completely on a tangent, there's a new film out called The Emigrants, based on a book by a chap called Vilhelm Moberg. It seems to have been shot a while back and held back for release post-COVID. The film is about a bunch of people from Sweden who moved to the United States in the 1800s. However the book was filmed before, in the early 1970s, with Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, whose name is two-two, like accommodate and millennium, but unlike Philippines which is one-two. And there was a sequel, The New Land.

Are they any good? The first film looks uncannily as if it was a 2010s indie film project shot on expired 35mm film stock:
https://www.blu-ray.com/The-Emigrants/317961/#Screenshots

One the one hand they get good reviews but on the other hand I have to admit I haven't heard of either of them, and yet they look wonderful and were nominated for awards etc.

Viz:
https://seeingthingssecondhand.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/screenshot-1318.png
https://images.static-bluray.com/reviews/13169_5_large.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EV5rfdnXYAI0Qyk?format=jpg&name=large
https://images.static-bluray.com/reviews/13169_14_large.jpg

the new land is exceptional, i rewatched it recently

Thor, Love & Thunder
finally got to see this. It was a cam but a pretty good one. Thought it might even not be until I saw somebody's head a couple fo minutes in.
Then at the end you see fully in focus backs blocking the credits.
Sound was good for the most part but it did get Spanish subtitles for some of the books and things.
Anyway thought it was fun and should have copped on who teh director was before the end credits. Don't think I read much about it before seeing it.
Funny subtheme about jealousy between warhammers etc since Mjolnir got broken up in an earlier film and was a relic in this until Jane Foster turned up and reunited it which I assume is already known by most. Other subtheme is what she does after that. Not sure what access is to or from Valhalla , has been a very long time since I read the comic
Did thoroughly enjoy it so hope there's more.

Passing Rebecca Hall 2021
Beautiful film about race at the time of teh Harlem Renaissance. Very atmospheric, nice b+w cinematography and some very good acting.
Took me a moment to realise i was watching Tess Thompson again in a very different role to last night. She seems pretty versatile on the strength of this
Think I had the file for this for a while before watching it. Think I may have the book somewhere too. So think I may need to read it too.
I was wondering to what extent Thompson would be passing in the light of this, but she looks like she might be seen to be Spanish or something from seeing her in a colour film. Not sure if that would work at the time it is set. But the film is beautiful.
Ruth Negga is pretty good too

I just watched Don't Let the Riverbeast Get You! starring Matt Farley of A message to the Spotify musician The Passionate & Objective Jokerfan (aka Matt Farley) fame. It's deranged in a pretty delightful way, I might be a convert to his movie universe.

Get That Venus (Varney, 1933)
Fat Wives for Thin (Sennett, 1930)
Dance Hall Marge (Sennett & Lord, 1931)
The Sap From Syracuse (Sutherland, 1930)
Dangerous Curves (Mendes, 1929)
When the Clouds Roll By (Fleming, 1919)
Nope (Peele, 2022)
The Devil's Rain (Fuest, 1975)
*The White Shadow (Cutts, 1924)
The Dark Mirror (Siodmak, 1946)

The Breadcrumb Trail 2014 Lance Bangs
the Slint band history.
Couldn't get this to play on my tv through memory stick a few weeks back so thought I'd stick it on as I chopped dinner today.
Good doc, makes me want to pick up a new copy of the cd . Don't remember seeing my copy in a long time.
Cd as I recall had nothing written on it so it looked similar on both sides. Teeth fell out of jewel case so it would probably need to be replaced even if I did find it. Definitely had a copy when I was i Dublin anyway.
Do think the guy who I saw playing tambourine with Royal Trux in the late 90s did look a lot like Britt Walford with bleached hair.

Elvis (6.0)
Caddyshack (5.0)
Thief (6.5)
Brian Eno: 1971-1977 - The Man Who Fell to Earth (6.5)
The Sopranos (S1-S7 – 9.0)
Smash His Camera (6.5)
Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable (7.5)
Year of the Dragon (5.5)
Dark Waters (6.5)
The People vs. Larry Flynt (5.5)

Memories (1995) 3/5
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) 4/5
Nope (2022) 4/5
Drunken Angel (1948) 4/5
RRR (2022) 4/5
* Robocop (1987) 5/5
Both Sides of the Blade (2022) 3.5/5

Bonus series:
Irma Vep (2022) 4/5. I was very skeptical about Assayas revisiting this material but it feels very contemporary and lively. A fun watch on summer evenings.

The Shallows (Collet-Sera 2016) 2.5/5
Out of the Past (Tourneur 1947) 5/5
Palm Springs (Barbakow 2020) 3/5
Looking for Richard (Pacino 1996) 3/5
Notorious (Hitchcock 1946) 5/5
His Girl Friday (Hawks 1940) 4.5/5
Do the Right Thing (Lee 1989) 5/5
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Yates 1973) 4/5
Monsters (Edwards 2010) 4/5
Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick 1957) 5/5
Jackie Brown (Tarantino 1997) 4.5/5

Being largely film-illiterate leads to some crazy runs eh (only one of those is a rewatch).

July:

Nekromantik (Buttgereit, 1987) DVD 8/10 DVD - still an effective piece of outrage
Twentynine Palms (Dumont, 2003) DVD 7/10
Hell Drivers (Endfield, 1957) YOUTUBE 7/10 - a James Bond, a Doctor Who, the Prisoner, a Man From UNCLE and Sid Boggle
The Wayward Cloud (Tsai, 2005) DVD 8/10
The Crime of Doctor Crespi (Auer, 1935) YOUTUBE 5/10
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Roth, Ramsey et al, 2018) BLU-RAY 6/10
The Stepford Wives (Forbes, 1975) DVD 8/10 - this has aged very well ...
*GoldenEye (Campbell, 1995) DVD 6/10 - this has aged very badly
Number Seventeen (Hitchcock, 1932) DVD 5/10 - Charles Barr has tried to make a case for this as Hitchcock's most experimentally reflexive British feature, but (as Hitchcock admitted to Truffaut) it's really just a right old mess, with an insufferable cockney character lead
Stolen Face (Fisher, 1952) DVD 6/10
The Changeling (Medal, 1980) DVD 7/10
Fire Sale (Arkin, 1977) BLU-RAY 4/10 - oh dear oh dear, what a drop-off from Little Murders
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (Steinmann, 1985) BLU-RAY 5/10 - avoid the commentary track
*Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997) BLU-RAY 8/10 - docked a point for some terrible 90s music choices, Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson esp
Footprints (Bazzoni, Fanelli, 1975) DVD 7/10 - I'm hoping that the forthcoming presentation from Severin does greater justice to Vittorio Storaro's colour imagery than the shoddy Shameless DVD I watched
This Island Earth (Newman, 1955) 8/10
*High Noon (Zinnemann, 1952) FILM FOUR 8/10 - some of the unmotivated panning shots across the empty town reminded me of Straub-Huillet! Floyd Crosby, what a cinematographer
Devil Doll (Shonteff, 1964) YOUTUBE 7/10
The Ghost and Mrs Muir (Mankiewicz, 1947) TALKING PICTURES TV 8/10
Homicidal (Castle, 1961) BLU-RAY 7/10 - again, superb crisp black and white cinematography (on a budget) from Burnett Duffey
Thor: Love and Thunder (Waititi, 2022) CINEWORLD 6/10
The Steel Bayonet (Carreras, 1958) TALKING PICTURES TV 5/10 - hard to see Hammer film, but really only of historic interest

The Phantom (James, 1931)
A Lady's Profession (McLeod, 1933)
The Strange Case of Clara Deane (Marcin & Gasnier, 1932)
She's My Lilly, I'm Her Willie (Watson, 1934)
Evangeline (Carewe, 1929)
Les Miserables (Bernard, 1934)
The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997)

July:

10 Things I Hate About You (not john hughes, not the 80s) 5/10
Targets (Corman/Bogdanovich, 1968) 6/10
Spider-Man 8 or so (Disney/Sony, 2021) 4/10

Nope (Peele, 2022) 8/10
My Name is Sara (Oritt, 2022) 8/10
* Internal Affairs (Figgis, 1990) 7/10
That's Life! (Edwards, 1986) 2/10
Manhattan Melodrama (Van Dyke, 1934) 7/10

Chameleon Street (1989) 4.5/5. It's every bit as great and its neglect by the film industry is every bit as shameful as I'd heard. I wonder if Paul Beatty saw it? The tone really reminded me of The Sellout.
Compulsion (1959) 3/5
Arrebato (1979) 3.5/5
Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1971) 2.5/5. Funny how all the mind expansion and experimentalism of this era didn't lead many artists to interrogate their own misogyny.
Prey (2022) 3.5/5
* Lost Highway (1997) 4/5. 2nd time seeing this in a theater. The 4k looks and sounds great; albeit not as revelatory as when I saw a 35mm print.
The Gunfighter (1950) 4.5/5

Rolling Stone (Chase, 1919)
Picking Peaches (Kenton, 1924)
Birds of Prey (Dean, 1930)
Mother Machree (surviving material) (Ford, 1927)
*Footlight Parade (Bacon & Berkeley, 1933)

Capitolfest 19
KoKo's Earth Control (Fleischer, 1928)
Penrod and Sam (Beaudine, 1923)
Woman Trap (Young, 1936) (The programmers announced the 1929 film of the same title; the distributor sent this unrelated film.)
Ex-Bad Boy (Moore, 1931)
The College Coquette (Archainbaud, 1929)
The Cobweb Hotel (Fleischer, 1936)
Nobody's Fool (Greville Collins, 1936)
Till I Come Back to You (de Mille, 1918)
*King Kong (Cooper & Schoedsack, 1933)
Barnacle Bill (Fleischer, 1930)
Mysterious Mose (Fleischer, 1930)
Seed (Stahl, 1931)
Little Red Riding Hood (Disney, 1922)
Celebrity (Garnett, 1928)
Somewhere in Dreamland (Fleischer, 1936)
Glamour (Wyler, 1934)
Jack and the Beanstalk (Disney, 1922)
Goldie Locks and the Three Bears (Disney, 1922)
Kitty From Kansas City (Fleischer, 1931)
The First Year (Howard, 1932)
The Poor Nut (Wallace, 1927)
Radio Patrol (Cahn, 1932)
*Moonlight and Pretzels (Freund, 1933)
Puss in Boots (Disney, 1922)
Cinderella (Disney, 1922)
A Jazzed Honeymoon (Roach, 1919)
The Roaring Road (Cruze, 1919)
I Love That Man (Brown & Towne, 1933)
Above the Clouds (Neill, 1933)
The Fire Brigade (Nigh, 1926)

Re-watched Walter Hill's Trespass tonight. Bill Paxton and Bill Sadler are firemen who learn about a hidden treasure in an abandoned building but while they're there searching for it, they run afoul of Ices T and Cube, who are there perpetrating a gang murder. Hijinks ensue.

*High Noon (Zinnemann, 1952) FILM FOUR 8/10 - some of the unmotivated panning shots across the empty town reminded me of Straub-Huillet! Floyd Crosby, what a cinematographer

The Mighty Barnum (Lang, 1934)
East of Borneo (Melford, 1931)
Honeymoon Beach (Edwards, 1932)
The Big Meow (Christie, 1934)
The Tonic (Montagu, 1928)
The Thief (Rouse, 1952)
City Across the River (Shane, 1949)
The Prince of Arcadia (Hartl, 1932)
Arizona (Seitz, 1931)

Prey Dan Trachtenberg 2022
Authentic looking early 18th century set meeting between a young native would be hunter woman and one of the Predator race from the series Arnie started. IT was pretty effective, utilised a largely native cast though seemed to be few in teh crew in the credits.
I didn't watch many of the series of predator and predator meets alien movies which seemed to drag on for a while but the first 2 films from the 90s were pretty effective and this seems to be a return to form.
I think it went down ok with the bits of Native American media I listen to and is also empowering to women I guess.
Well really enjoyed it so hope others do.

The Drop Kick (Webb, 1927)
The Silver Streak (Atkins, 1934)
Mr. Klein (Losey, 1976)
The Silent Command (Edwards, 1923)
The Lost Record (Svenonius & Cabral, 2021)
The Killer Shrews (Kellogg, 1959)

Red Nation roundtable review of Prey. So an Indian take on the film set in a pre colonial Comanche territory. Interesting.
Does point out that the film being written and directed by a white film maker does direct gaze even if there was a lot of input from people from various Indian Tribes
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6jyASI54Vdq0ECc0tT05Gb?si=c8f97f84ddaa4bf3

August viewing

*The Living Daylights (Glen, 1987)8/10
Real Life (Brooks, 1979)8/10
Resurrection (Semans, 2022) 6/10
Aloners (Hong Sung-eun, 2021) 8/10
*Room 237 (Ascher, 2012) 6/10
*Naked Lunch (Cronenberg, 1991) 8/10
Nope (Peele, 2022) 6/10
Police Story (Chan, 1985) 9/10
A Summer's Tale (Rohmer, 1996) 8/10
Brute Force (Dassin, 1947) 7/10
Between Two Dawns (Nacar, 2021) 8/10
Prayers For The Stolen (Huezo, 2021) 7/10
Shellshock Rock (Davis, 1979) 6/10
The Night Comes For Us(Tjahjanto, 2018) 6/10
The Palm Beach Story (Sturges, 1942) 6/10
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (Fiennes, 2012) 8/10
Bergman Island (Love, 2021) 6/10
Anantaram (Gopalakrishnan, 1987) 9/10
Prey (Trachtenberg, 2022) 5/10
Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955) 8/10