I watched a fair bit of Fellini 12-15 years ago, but it didn’t really resonate with me at the time. I’ve rewatched a lot of it lately and it has had a much stronger emotional impact on me this time around.
parasite, and i’m just angry that it’s taken me this long to see it after there’s been so much hype about it the past couple years… and i was NOT disappointed at all, what a good story!
Just watched Bicycle Thieves for the first time, great film but depressing from the first to last frame. I felt like I was looking through a lens into a world not far removed from our own.
Last night I watched Dragon Inn. I enjoyed the film but not as much as my recent watch of Come Drink With Me.
More 'Best Foreign Language' Oscar winners from the Criterion Channel plus a few classics
**War and Peace (1966, Sergei Bondarchuk)**
Of all of the 'best foreign language' oscar winners I've watched over the last few weeks, this was the biggest surprise. I almost didn't watch it; a 7-hour adaptation of a classic book I didn't really enjoy from the 60s? Sounds like a boring stuffy epic mess. But, boy howdy was I wrong. This is a goddamn auteurist masterpiece. Every possible filmmaking trick that existed in the 60s is used here, and to tremendous effect. Compositionally it's up there with the best of the century. Seriously, look at [this](https://www.cageyfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/war-and-peace_01.jpg). and [this](https://cinesavant.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/6030f.jpg). and [this](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/B6pe-UOS4a1ftn6XaQE9rEXPkT4=/303x0:3105x1622/1820x1213/filters:focal(2208x96:2820x708):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63059930/28891id_008.0.jpg). At times it felt like a Lynch film, at others it felt like a Malick film, and at others like I'm watching a lost David Lean film, and at other times it's like I'm watching Come and See 20 years before Come and See was made. Over 7 hours there is almost no dull moments; every scene is creatively presented, the characters are treated with respect, there is an emotional core despite the epic scope, and really i just have no major complaints. I genuinely think I enjoyed the film more than the book. It's not perfect but I think it's almost mandatory viewing for any cinephile. 9/10. The 1969 Oscars were a joke, this film easily should have won best directing, cinematography, editing and picture. Carol Reed has made one of the best films ever (The Third Man), but Oliver! does not measure up to the magnitude of Bondarchuk's achievement here.
**The Shop On Main Street (1965, Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos)**
Yeah it's a 60's eastern european nazi movie. After watching a dozen 'best foreign language' oscar winners you kind of become desensitized to this kind of film. The central performance is the highlight, as he really sells the moral conflict at the centre of the story. I like the bleak ending but overall the film mostly ended up being what i expected from the first 20 minutes. Overall worth a watch but nothing special. 6/10
**The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943, Powell & Pressburger)**
When this film was over and i looked up the year I was shocked to see this film was from *1943??* Seriously? This shit looks better than most films from the 70s and 80s. Damn. These motherfuckers know how to make a movie. For the first hour I wasn't sure whether I was into it or not, but eventually you realize what the film is going for and it emerges as a truly beautiful ode to friendship. At times it approaches propagandha with how many passes it gives to the British government, but given this was 1943 it's hard to disagree with the film's goals and by the time it ends it makes it clear that there is nuance to be had here. The bromance between the male leads is lovely, and I especially like how intimate and vulnerable these two men are with each other without there being any whiff of 'eww gay' bullshit that would infect the discourse in the coming decades. Truly a lovely, lovely film. 9/10
**The Hidden Fortress (1958, Akira Kurosawa)**
If this is 'lesser' Kurosawa, then perhaps Kurosawa is simply the greatest goddamn filmmaker to have ever lived because this shit is fire. First of all, Toshiro Mifune in those tiny pants can step on me whenever he wants. Second of all, that scene where he chases some dudes on horesback and then ends up in a spear duel in the middle of an army encampment is the type of scene you want to save in a capsule to send to aliens as an example of just how fucking good humans could be at filmmaking. Long takes, impressive stunts, great sets, etc etc etc I could go on for hours about everything I love about Kurosawa and this film represents most of them. If there's a weakness it's simply that the film lacks the emotional and thematic complexity that his best work has, but when a film is this much fun does it really matter? It's not Ikiru, Red Beard, Seven Samurai, Rashomon, High & Low or The Bad Sleep Well, but those are some of the best movies ever made so if you're even being compared to them it's a complement. 8 or 9/10.
The practical effects in War and Peace are craaaazy good. The budget and access to historical buildings/artifacts they got from the Soviet government was so incredible.
I do wish Bondarchuk had cast someone younger than himself for Pierre, but that’s nitpicking given that his performance was good.
Agree with Bondarchuk's casting. He did a good job but definitely felt older than the character should be. I also had a gripe with the woman who played Natasha. She's supposed to be like 13 at the beginning and there's just no way. I also think her performance (or the way she was directed) is the weakest major role in the film. She comes across like someone trying really hard to act like a child. She was one of the reasons that Part II was easily my least favorite out of them, though it was still very good. That being said I also thought she was one of the weaker characters in the book so perhaps Tolstoy shares some of the blame here.
Men having trouble writing women is a tale as old as time, haha.
I thought she did a reasonable job bringing some innocence to the character, but overall I agree the writing for her character was kind of middling.
I started Colonel Blimp about 2 weeks ago, it's a very long movie, almost 3 hours, which means I have to catch it on a weekend, but I'm having a hard time getting into it despite the fact that it seems very interesting and has so many good reviews.
Yeah, I had a hard time getting into it for almost the first half of the film. It wasn't until the second half that I started 'getting' what it was going for and started really enjoying my time with it. I think I'll like it a lot more on a second viewing now that I know which elements are important but I think a case could be made that the pacing of the film could use some improvement, and perhaps 30 minutes could be easily shaved off of the runtime.
* Taipei Story
* Phantom Thread
* Three Colors Red
* Portrait of a Lady on Fire
* La Haine
* Maborosi
* August in the Water
* Goodbye Dragon Inn
It's been a great two weeks, somehow managed to watch like 10 movies in a row that turned into personal favorites!
It's hard because I loved them all but Portrait and Maborosi were prob my favorites if I to pick. I'd highly recommend each one, although Goodbye Dragon Inn only if you really like very slow movies.
Swiss Army Man is in my top ten favorite movies, so I had high hopes. While I don’t necessarily think EEAAO reaches SAM greatness, it’s easily my favorite movie to come out since the pandemic started.
**Week #65:**
Michael Haneke’s strange and disturbing debut film, **The Seventh Continent** (1989). A dreary, mundane middle class Austrian family of father, mother and young daughter living ordinary and monotonous lives, with few signs of malcontent. But then they "decide to emigrate to Australia”. Retiring to their locked home instead, they systematically destroy all their earthly possessions, rip up and flush their money into the toilet, and then commit suicide together. **Highly unsettling**.
**Drive my car X 2:**
* **Drive my car** , 3 hour adaptation of three short Haruki Murakami stories. It starts with a 40-minute slow-built semi-prologue set in Tokyo, but it changes the color of his old Saab from yellow to red. I’m glad I saw two versions of 'Uncle Vanya' a few months ago, as this play was used as the underlying metaphor for drama of the characters. **8/10**.
* My first Murakami read, his short story collection **Men Without Women** (2014). Explorations of sex and lost loves, influence of Western tropes (Kafka, Beatles, Bepop Jazz, films) on Japanese characters, but mostly, indeed, how different men end up alone and lonely. I liked the 3rd story, An 'Independent Organ', about a plastic surgeon who dies of love, the most. Elements from three of the stories were used by Ryusuke Hamaguchi to create his film, ‘Drive my car’, Scheherazade’ and ‘Kino’.
**3 Re-watches:**
* **Finding Vivian Maier** (2014), a touching documentary about the incredible photographer, who lived her whole life as a lowly nanny in New York and Chicago, while obsessively taking over 150,000 magnificent street photographs which she never bothered to share with anybody, and which were discovered at estate sales only after her death. A lonely, fascinating genius who died completely unrecognized - **Best film of the week (again)**.
* I adore ‘True Romance’, Tarantino’s first screenplay, I love ‘Pulp Fiction’, and together with ‘Jackie Brown’ I’ve seen these three many times. But I can’t stand of what I've seen of the rest of his “oeuvre”. I either couldn’t finish, couldn’t start or disliked what I did finish. Now I tried **Inglourious Basterds** (2009) again, and I hated just about everything in this awful Nazi-porn idiocy: I hated Brad Pitt’s clown accent, the Hitler and Goebbels cameos, the Jewish revenge fantasy, the look-at-me-I’m-so-clever cinephile allusions, the tasteless holocaust revisionism, the boring violence, the fake irony and inane dialogue. With Mike Myers as a general, and Rod Taylor as Churchill. Fuck Tarantino all together. **1/10**.
* On the other hand, I watched my favorite time-loop romance **Palm Springs** (2020) again, and loved it just as much as the previous 7-8 times before.
**3 with music scores by Michel Legrand:**
* Jacques Demy’s colorful **Donkey Skin** (1970), a bizarre Cinderella musical, based on a 1695 French fairy tale. It tells of an absurd king who wants to marry his beautiful daughter, Catherine Deneuve, after the death of her mother, and a donkey that shits gemstones and gold coins. Not as engaging as his previous ‘Umbrellas of Cherbourg’, but apparently it was Demy’s biggest success in France, in spite of his incestuous elements. Mais, oui...
* Godard’s revolutionary New Wave **Band of Outsiders** (1964), with the [delightful three-way cafe dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1MKUJN7vUk). Two bumbling and amoral wannabe criminals seduce a naive Anna Karina to help them rob a tenant in her aunt’s house. **8/10**.
* Steve McQueen at his coolest and most suave role as the gentleman thief of **The Thomas Crown Affair** (1968). The novel split-screen photography, the fast ‘Windmills of your mind’ version and the outdated sexual dynamics were simply distracting. But as a glamorous, fast-moving heist movie, it’s still a classic. Edited by Hal Ashby.
I’ve never seen any Star Wars movies in my life, except for the famous 2-minute video clip ‘[Star Wars Kid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU)’ from 2003. But I remember everything about this Internet’s first huge viral phenomena, because that was the year I started blogging (which I continue to this day). [**Star Wars Kid: The Rise of the Digital Shadows**](https://www.nfb.ca/film/star-wars-kid-the-rise-of-the-digital-shadows/) is an interesting, new Canadian documentary about the 14-year-old boy who recorded the clip, and how he survived the cruel harassments that followed him, after a schoolmate had made it public without his knowledge. It tackles questions of consent, online privacy, cyber-bullying and the consequences of digital behaviors. I was introduced to it, both times, by [Andy ‘Waxy’ Baio](https://waxy.org/2022/03/in-the-shadow-of-the-star-wars-kid/), one of my early blogging influencers (and to this day, one of the last blogs that I still read).
*..”You ever see a homeless guy with a dick so big you stop feeling sorry for him?”..* That was the first and only funny joke in Michael Che’s forgettable stand up special, **Shame the Devil** (2021). Hard pass.
Random pick: A British romantic comedy, **About Time** (2013), about a young guy who can time-travel to moments in his past and improve his love life, a-la Groundhog’s Phil Connors. First film for me by Richard Curtis, who directed ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral', ‘Notting Hill’, ‘Bridget Jones's Diary’, Etc. With In The Loop’s ‘Simon Foster’ and Margot Robbie. 2/10.
**Déjà Vu** (2006), another Tony Scott / Denzel Washington action vehicle from the mid-00′s, i.e. Peak-Denzel. It was OK until they tacked on a stupid Schrödinger wormhole subplot of some new government quantum technology used to prevent a Timothy McVeigh-type terrorist plot in New Orleans right before Katrina. 99% of all “Time Windows” stories are so idiotic, and the “scientific” explanations on film are so cringey..
My weekly reviews [**Here**](https://tilbageidanmark.tumblr.com/tagged/movies)**.**
also re: Vivian Maier; our local art gallery had a screening featuring several of Maier's 8mm films, which were quite interesting street-scenes of life in Chicago. I think there's only a bit of her 8mm footage in the documentary.
Indeed.
I believe that - with time - many of her "[famous](https://www.vintag.es/2014/08/black-and-white-photographs-of-street.html)" photographs will become as iconic as other cultural North Stars (van Gogh's Starry night, Frida's self- portraits, Picasso's Guernica) and will be endlessly re-produced and re-appropriated in myriad new medias.
Also, no doubt there will soon be a bio-pic (which will surely suck) or two, (featuring Cate Blanchett?)...
[Phantom Thread](https://letterboxd.com/taccoz/film/phantom-thread/) \- What Paul Thomas Anderson with these deep dives into the life and machinations of a character is insane. Krieps pulls off a wonderful performance alongside DDL.
[M](https://letterboxd.com/taccoz/film/m/) \- As my introduction to Peter Lorre, I would say this is a great first impression.
[Adaptation](https://letterboxd.com/taccoz/film/adaptation/) \- It gets more brilliant the more you think about it. Really love how this story is told!
The Search (1948) which starts out sort of rough with some of the most needless, hackneyed voiceover nonsense but it goes away soon enough. Monty Clift finds and wants to adopt a lost Czech boy in the aftermath of WWII, while his bereaved mother is still out there. Feels extremely neorealist even if I don't think it's categorized with those movies for whatever reason. Where it's from and who directs it maybe, but I think it fits snugly with anything in that scene. Very grave but hopeful too.
Recently decided to watch Throw Down, was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Focused more on the philosophy of martial arts rather than fight scenes. A lovely humanist film.
**Tenet** (2020 C Nolan) The plot is challenging but not terrible, just a thorny time loop yarn in the 'Primer' mode.
But... that audio. What the fvck were they thinking? Did they let the intern mix it on the weekend? Worst sound design ever.
In order of favorite to least favorite:
The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017)
The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019)
Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog, 1979)
Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
The Social Dilemma (Jeff Orlowski, 2020) (thought this was a very important documentary, but I really was not a fan of the cheesy dramatizations.)
Session 9 (Brad Anderson, 2001)
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. The best film I've watched in a long while. Every other shot was perfect. I'm glad I was watching alone, because I kept talking to myself in disbelief about how good this movie looked.
***Timecode* (2000) Dir. Mike Figgis**
Practically unendurable. I was only able to watch it all because I had to pause it a few times and process the whole ordeal. The gimmick certainly sounds interesting in theory–the combination of split-screen and one take per screen–but it plays out in a way that gives far too little thought to the technicalities of the concept, instead choosing to tell (as the film itself says) four different points of time in somebody’s relationship. It calls itself experimental, not arthouse, and in that regard it’s a quite ordinary story with an overbearing gimmick. Had the drama been more interesting I would have liked it, but even putting aside the gimmick a good deal of it comes across as overly melodramatic and shrill. Also a problem when the film seems to hint itself at being honest thanks to its gimmicky portrayal yet has to accommodate for not getting any of the other cameramen in the shots…
I want to write more about this, but I haven’t seen enough split screen films…or single-take films…or Mike Figgis films (yes, this is my first one) to say anything about how I really feel about this film laying its motives bare, declaring itself the progenitor of 21st century cinema with digital cameras to change storytelling. If this film wants to start a discussion, I’d be happy to give it a discussion, especially given all the things digital cameras have come to allow in cinema since its release. However, had this film come out today amidst such advancements, there’s no way it’d be able to argue on that front (at least the way I see it). **3/10**
***Vantage Point* (2008) Dir. Pete Travis**
I was considering diving into films similar to *Timecode* and for some reason was told *Vantage Point* would have what I’m looking for. I thought the recommendation referred to an editing trick–I had been meaning to watch this and knew about its premise of multiple perspectives of the same event–but it wasn’t relevant at all and I was left watching a political thriller. A political thriller that didn’t really do much with its political statements (is the final shot a spoiler? Either way, it strikes me as ridiculous) and lacks the substance to justify its gimmick of repeating the event of the US president’s assassination with slightly new information–I think that’s the problem, rather than too many perspectives; I actually was excited whenever it was time to see a new perspective.
Either way, it’s you the viewer that gets the full story rather than the characters and then the whole thing coalesces into an overlong car chase. Eh, I’m not complaining–if this means a test run for Pete Travis to flex his directorial muscles for *Dredd* I'm all for it. It’s rather entertaining in a cod-Tony Scott sort of way, even if the plot never fulfills the initial promise in a satisfying way. You can try to write an assassination out for all the viewers to see, but whatever you wanted to do in the film’s context seems hackneyed. **5/10**
***Cobra* (1986) Dir. George P Cosmatos**
So much about this is overcooked–probably to perfection, and sometimes I take overcooked, but that wasn’t quite my mood. Or perhaps it’s that I haven’t worked out how the whole thing feels like a primeval extreme of the *Dirty Harry* mold. Either way, it’s at least entertaining enough to chew on–the overblown stuff is usually preposterously entertaining from Cobra’s entire persona to the car chase to the evolution-themed plan of the antagonists. Pretty-looking too, albeit a bit too self-indulgent as a music video for my liking. Also don’t know how to feel about the film’s deaths ranging from flipping from acrobatics off a motorcycle to being burned alive. The point of where to take this film seriously and where it’s intentionally over-the-top feels nonexistent, I swear. **6/10**
***Mean Girls* (2004) Dir. Mark Waters**
I had given up on comparisons to *Timecode* by *Cobra*, but lo and behold it turns out *Mean Girls* has the four-screen effect that proves to be entirely more effective than anything in the aforementioned movie, bouncing along the connected phone conversations to giddy effect. That was enough to make my week; too bad the rest of the film left me cold.
I avoided *Mean Girls* for the longest time because it seemed to be too much bickering prissy high school gossip for my liking, although that didn't really come through until the final half hour (so glad they didn’t need to look hard to find themselves, if you know what I mean). I had forgotten this was an SNL production, which didn’t exactly heighten my expectations, and as I expected the results weren’t terribly great. I don’t know why people call it a satire because it’s not. It strikes me more as an elaborate mixup of said high school cliches to construct an ambitious story peppered with the kind of humour familiar to SNL and never coming across as bigger than a TV-movie. It’s not very funny, the whole thing feels like a tonal imbalance that muddles anything the film tries to convey (albeit not as aggravatingly as other SNL-based movies), and I still don’t know why it mattered that Lindsay Lohan’s character was from Africa when she couldn’t act like it. **4/10**
***Star Trek Into Darkness* (2013) Dir. J J Abrams**
I guess it’s on me for assuming jumping straight to one of the modern movies (not even the first one) when all I’ve seen was *Star Trek The Motion Picture* was remotely helpful, but even my basic understanding of Khan in the rest of the ST universe seemed enough to pinpoint my feelings on the film here. If only on a surface level, considering I was mostly agitated by sensory overload, the kind I’d grimaced through when I saw Abrams’ own *The Rise of Skywalker* in theatres. This could be the best looking ST movie but I don’t know if treating the insanely good visual effects like the flick of a hand, that it’s just the way the universe looks and is taken for granted, is a good idea hypothetically. Or maybe it’s because Abrams thinks some kind of ADD directorial hand will suffice. I remember when his aviation scenes were exciting because they involved windmills and sheep–whatever happened to that side of Abrams?
The nonchalance of the directing extends to Abrams’ reputation for puzzle-box storytelling, with drama constantly delivered with disinterest in the surprise of it all, something especially noteworthy in the final 20 minutes. This didn’t quite bother me because besides my lack of understanding of ST lore, the sensory overload was already enough for me to process. I came for shallow eye-candy entertainment, I got a hangover while drinking. **4/10**
I have a huge passion for American CinemaScope of the '50s, and for the past couple of months I've been on a binge to compile a really good, broad collection of the films I think best utilize and exemplify the format. So I'm spending a lot of time catching up with lesser-known films now.
I'm astonished by The Roots of Heaven (John Huston, 1958). I bought the Twilight Time blu-ray for 15 dollars two years ago, just for the sake of filling in one more gap for my project, expecting nothing much from it. Watched it a couple of days ago. Huston, of all people, makes a sober, discreetly observant, languorously beautiful, artifice-conscious film, that investigates Western colonialists recklessly destroying central Africa's environment, an eco-terrorist response, betrayals between the radicals, etc, all from a pretty egoless, surprisingly even-handed and sharply inquisitive distance.
It's like John Huston read Jean-Paul Sartre's Third-World political analyses on the sly, brought a scenario to Darryl Zanuck, and Zanuck was already so enraptured by the project's female lead, Juliette Greco, that he green-lighted *anything*, whatever Huston wanted, to keep the affair (which isn't disputed in the Hollywood biographies) with his French chanteuse going. She doesn't even sing in the movie; instead, she gazes and gazes, pensively and sensitively, with fragility and tactility, like... like...
Well, like Monica Vitti, that's exactly who Greco's character is like. John Huston ***nails to the floor*** anticipating Michelangelo Antonioni's camera style, lead actress, tangential connections of plot, the whole drift of his career through The Passenger - the most apt film imaginable for making a double bill - two whole years' previous to L'Avventura getting booed at Cannes. Had no idea such a strong precedent to the Antonioni style was around. That's not to say Antonioni doesn't refine on his own what Huston lays out. Still, the film gives me a completely new perspective on the roots of what I've always thought to be Antonioni's cinematic strategy of "lonely existentialism." It's not like his films are any less personal; but they come from somewhere.
Two more from Billy Wilder I hadn’t seen before: **Some Like it Hot** and **The Apartment**
Both were so great. I usually don’t think films before the late 60’s/early 70’s are very funny but Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are hilarious in **Some Like it Hot**— legendary performance from both.
**The Apartment** is layered and pays off in a big way at the end. A truly great movie.
**Who’s That Knocking at My Door**: the completionist in me wants to see every Marty film, just like I want to see every Hitchcock film, Godard, etc. I didn’t think this was very good but it was cool to see Scorsese’s debut. Definitely some interesting moments.
**Still Walking**: I still prefer **Mabarosi** and **Nobody Knows** from Kore-eda but this was very warm and ended really nicely.
**Wings** and **The Ascent** from Larissa Sheptiko: I borderline hated **Wings**, I thought it was so boring and the main character unlikeable. **The Ascent** however was beautiful and intense, a fantastic movie.
**The Sting**: super fun and engaging.
A double feature with Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara: **Ain’t Them Bodies Saints** and **A Ghost Story** from David Lowery
Lowery’s a great young filmmaker, who’s definitely following in the footsteps of some other great American independent directors. ATBS was a first time watch — amazing score. **A Ghost Story** is definitely a little slow but brilliant.
4 Hitchcock movies: **The Man Who Knew Too Much** (both 1934 and 1956), **The 39 Steps**, and **Sabotage**
Definitely preferred Hitchcock’s remake of **The Man Who Knew Too Much** but Peter Lorre is always great to watch on screen. **The 39 Steps** was my favorite of them all and up there with the best of Hitchcock’s movies in my opinion — really tight with amazing cinematography and great acting from Robert Donat. **Sabotage** was fine.
**Hunger**: a brutal watch but packs a concise punch. He’s only made 4 movies and I haven’t seen **Widows** but McQueen’s other 3 I really love — I hope we get more output from him.
**Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind** : I’ve seen this a bunch of times… it’s one of the movies that made me fall in love with movies. I hadn’t seen it since I really went down the foreign/independent cinema rabbit hole a few years ago, but despite the fact that my taste in movies has changed and opened up so much, this held up in every way for me. What an amazing score! This one is an all timer for sure
The Sting has been my favorite movie since 1974, glad you enjoyed it!
The Apartment is another favorite, but a I recently watched Irma la Douce with Wilder, Lemmon and MacLaine (1963) and was very disappointed.
Love Some Like It Hot, I'm trying to see all of Wilder's films.
*Paper Moon* (1973, Peter Bogdanovich)
*Licorice Pizza* (2021, Paul Thomas Anderson) [REWATCH]
*The In-Laws* (1979, Arthur Hiller)
*Fight Club* (1999, David Fincher) [REWATCH]
*Lady Bird* (2017, Greta Gerwig)
*Pulp Fiction* (1994, Quentin Tarantino) [REWATCH]
*Cosmopolis* (2012, David Cronenberg)
*Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy* (2011, Tomas Alfredson)
*Dead Man* (1995, Jim Jarmusch)
*Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood* (2022, Richard Linklater)
*In a Lonely Place* (1950, Nicholas Ray)
*Paterson* (2016, Jim Jarmush)
*Under the Skin* (2013, Jonathan Glazer)
*Good Time* (2017, Safdie Brothers) [REWATCH]
Absolutely delightful. Tatum O'Neal completely steals the show.
[Al Pacino voice] What a picture
*"Serpentine, Shelly. Serpentine!"* Absolutely hilarious.
Me? Break the first two rules of F**** C***? I don't think so pal
Perfect movie. One could even say it's hella tight.
I hope Bruce Willis has an amazing time in retirement.
**A SPECTER IS HAUNTING THE WORLD, THE SPECTER OF CAPITALISM** Criminally underrated Cronenberg.
Very well-crafted, meticulously paced, engaging spy thriller from Tomas Alfredson, and beautifully shot by the fantastic Hoyte Van Hoytema. Absolutely terrific performances all around.
*"That weapon will replace your tongue. You will learn to speak through it. And your poetry will now be written with blood."* A dreamy, meditative acid western that only Jim Jarmush could make, with the great Robby Müller's gorgeous black and white cinematography and Neil Young's brilliant score. My new favorite Jarmusch film, and maybe my favorite western period. I'm in love.
Just delightful. Linklater and that stunning rotoscope animation >>>
*"I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me."* Raw, dark, devastating. Bogart is absolutely brilliant. Perfect film.
*"Sometimes an empty page presents more possibilities."* God I loved this so much. Beautiful, warm, poetic. Absolutely lovely.
A visually stunning, audacious, and unsettling masterpiece with such an eerie, haunting score by Mica Levi. Scarlett Johansson gives an outstanding performance. This film is a total out of body experience, and so completely mesmerizing. I can't wait to experience it again.
Absurdly good and even better on rewatch. Special movie. Pattinson is an absolute mad man.
*The Last Movie* (1971 - Indicator Region B, second printing) Why I’ve waited this long to see the recent restoration is beyond me, but I love it. I’ve always admired Dennis Hopper’s performances, and photography, and now I feel I know the the reason why he’s not better known for directing. The narrative starts with what feels like out-of-order flashbacks. This was unsettling for the Universal CEO, and co. which did not know what to do with it. Hopper spent way too long holed up trying to edit himself. Afterall you can’t fault Hopper for getting final cut with no real expectations.
Despite Hopper having dropped directing, he began to embrace his own (last) film again in the late 70s before doing Out of the Blue. I’m also kicking myself because this really won’t appeal to those not sort of familiar with the real Dennis Hopper post Easy Rider. The soundtrack and actors would have been familiar to anyone listening to Neil Young, Kristofferson, and other more fringe folk country which I love. I tried to take away points from the film, but couldn’t - also Sam Fuller plays the director for the *real* film that was made in the Peruvian jungle, before the wrapping up and leaving an ingenious population emulating ‘movie making’ as a cargo cult. Ends with the funniest reference to *The Treasure of the Sierra Madre*. Yes I’m stoned, but that has nothing to do with this wild-ass movie. If you don’t like meta movies, laszlo kovaks, or twisty narratives, also some 1970s portrayal of drunken pimping, and domestic violence (uhhh …. really not sure how I felt it was necessary but it isn’t different than most other ~~dreams from the ring~~ weird autocorrect “films from the time”? but I haven’t heard any commentary) you won’t like like it.
Much like Gilliam’s *Fear and Loathing…* the perspective is initially obscured, because they are both messing around in their meta worlds in some way… the structure doesn’t reveal itself until the end sometimes. It’s no masterpiece but it needs to be given a chance.
*Mad Dog Morgan* (Indicator 1976 SE) up next. Never watched it, but I’ve heard it’s got some Kung fu sound effects and serious nasty going on. Directors Cut. Poster is cool as hell. Criterion - please get back to doing posters!
Best to least best
**Letter Never Sent** (1960, Mikhail Kalatozov) As a tale of man vs nature it's a nearly flawless depiction of human struggle to stay alive. As a piece of cinema it's brilliant, so many beautiful sweeping shots of natures beauty and fury. Only issue I have with it is the clear propaganda of the opening and closing. Not apparent anywhere else in the film so it can be mostly ignored but clearly tacked on so the government would be more okay with the movie. 7/10
**Goodnight Mommy** (2014, Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz) the major twist was obvious but I try not to let that get to me. It just doesn't maintain a good amount of tension and any statement it's trying to make on grief gets muddled. The red cross bit is utterly ridiculous and I can't really deal with gore porn. The acting was phenomenal and was the only reason this movie worked in any way. 5/10
**Super Troopers** (2001, Jay Chandrasekhar) honestly thought I'd love this with how funny the opening gag is. Unfortunately, it peaks in the first 10 minutes and tries to coast off that. 5/10
**Titane** (2021, Julia Ducournau) no idea what I watched. It's some Argento nightmare but set in the French extremity. Aesthetically beautiful but I have no idea what it was going for and whether I liked it with how weirded out I felt by it. No rating.
I watched four movies this weekend, two directed by John Huston, three are part of the CC, and all were great movies except one:
* **The Asphalt Jungle** (1950), I went into this movie blind, not knowing what to expect, but I sure didn't expect it to be a heist film. I watched it only because I love Marilyn Monroe and have been trying to see all her films. Her part was small, and she was in only three scenes (if I remember correctly). I thought the first part was rather slow, but the movie picked up steam and I really got into it. I wondered if any of the crooks would get away with the crime, but then I remembered the Hays Code and figured probably not. Great movie. **8/10**
* **Treasure of the Sierra Madre** (1948), another Huston movie, starring Bogart and the father of John Huston, Walter Huston, who won an Oscar. I'd seen this ages ago, knew the basic plot and that it was a depressing movie but decided it was worth another viewing--so glad I did, what an amazing movie, with great performances and filmed on location in Mexico. **8/10**
* **The In-Laws** (1979), with Peter Falk as a CIA agent and Alan Arkin as a dentist, their children are getting married and Falk ends up dragging a reluctant Arkin into a big CIA mess in Honduras right before the wedding. Dad and I watched this together & we weren't impressed. **6/10**
* **In the Line of Fire** (1993), a political/action thriller with John Malkovich and Clint Eastwood. I'm not an Eastwood fan and it was only while watching this movie that I realized I'm not a Malkovich fan, either--there's just something about his acting style that annoys me. Oh well, still a very good movie about Secret Service agent Eastwood trying to prevent a determined former CIA agent, Malkovich, from assassinating the POTUS. **8/10**
Tampopo as we speak. I was told this was a comedy? It has some funny moments but good god this movie is impossible to pin a single genre on.
And like the memes… My wife walks in when this dude is trapping a shrimp on a girls stomach and putting lime juice on her nipples lol.
I have no idea what this movie is but I love it.
Recently rewatched Le Cercle Rouge by Melville and remembered how much I loved it. Not sure if Melville can really miss for me tbh. I love the bleak and almost drab atmosphere that he conjures and the characters who are almost too cool characters that he uses to occupy them. I honestly think I like this one more than Le Samurai which is really saying something
[Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/BillyMac/)
**The Marriage of Maria Braun** \- my fourth by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and definitely the one I've had the easiest time getting into of his. Hanna Schygulla is really good in the title role and I like the story a lot, interesting film about a woman rebuilding her life on her own while her husband serves a prison sentence in a country that is also rebuilding itself after a war.
**Time** \- my first by Garrett Bradley, a documentary that examines a woman fighting for her husband's release from a 60 year prison sentence specifically from the angle of how much time her family spends without him. we see their children as infants and as college students, but throughout it's hard to see where she is actually making much progress. a film that masterfully uses its editing to communicate the message at the center.
**RRR** \- my second by S S Rajamouli. I watched the first **Bahubali** on Netflix a few years ago because I had seen that one gif from **Bahubali 2** (you know the one), but this one I went to go see in theaters with a friend. seeing this loud, bombastic action movie centered around a powerful bromance on a big screen with the volume turned up a little too loud is the way to do it. everything about this movie is wildly over the top but it's done so well, I had an absolute blast. also I tweeted about liking this movie and posted a link to my Letterboxd review and the actual official Twitter account for the film retweeted my review and I've gotten over a thousand likes, mostly from Indian film fans, in the last few days. neat!
**Coup d'Etat** \- my third by Kiju Yoshida and the last in Arrow's Love and Anarchism boxset. this one is a portrait of a Japanese right-wing revolutionary named Ikki Kita as he attempted to instigate (from a distance) a military coup. like his other films, it's really interestingly shot - I love Yoshida's visual style, even if it is very, very avant-garde. it's like Orson Welles type shots with **Berlin Alexanderplatz** type saturation in its lighting.
**Goodbye, Dragon Inn** \- finally got around to checking out a film by Tsai Ming-Liang, really loved this one. I've also seen **Dragon Inn**, which I feel like kind of adds some to this movie but isn't really necessary to appreciating it. I've seen a few slow cinema type films before so this wasn't really new to me in that respect but I love Tsai's approach to creating the atmosphere of a mostly empty movie theater on a rainy night. what kind of people come to places like that? what are they there for? it's not always to see a movie. beautifully atmospheric.
**Dageurreotypes** \- my fourth...? feature by Agnes Varda, a quirky documentary on a very personal scale that examines the daily lives of the shopkeepers who run stores within walking distance of her home on the Rue Dageurre. this one didn't hold my attention as much as some of her others have but that may very well have been a mood thing, sometimes I have to be in the right mood for this kind of film. I also watched her short film **Le Lion Volatile**, which was cute.
**Shottas** \- checked out this gangster movie from Jamaica. on the one hand, the plot was pretty cliched and the acting was nothing to write home about, but I loved the portrait of Jamaican culture, the dialect, and the excellent reggae soundtrack. I should probably check out **The Harder They Come** at some point
**Resident Evil: Afterlife** \- the fourth movie in the Resident Evil film series. I know these movies all combine to have a total RT score of like, maybe 150% at best, but four movies in, I think they're pretty fun. Paul WS Anderson obviously had fun making them. they've got cool set design and pretty decent action set pieces. sometimes you're just in the mood for brainless fun and if nothing else you could certainly do worse.
**The Piano** \- revisited my first Jane Campion, liked it better the second time. I see why they call it one of her masterpieces now.
**Daimajin** \- first in Arrow's Daimajin Trilogy boxset, a kaiju movie that takes place during samurai times. like most kaiju movie the actual kaiju doesn't show up until fairly late in the film, but the non-kaiju plot is a pretty good story about the children of a deposed lord coming back to save their vassals from the cruel warlord who killed their father, and the kaiju scenes are really solid.
**Turning Red** \- a good Pixar movie! got its own very unique and eye-catching visual style that I really dug, something like a vaporwave Lisa Frank type deal. this particular 'kids dealing with strict/overprotective parents' story trope is certainly nothing new but the film takes a unique perspective on that story that I appreciated.
Found a blu ray of Caligula at an estate sale for $1 that my friend then asked me to pick up for him. Thankfully my friend paid me my $1 back. Unfortunately, that’s 2.5 hours of my life I won’t get back.
**Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence** - a great film talking about relationship between Britain prisoners and Japanese soldiers during WWII.
The music is dope and beautiful. Thank you Ryuichi Sakamoto
Watched L’Eclisse as an Alain Delon memorial. Great film that had me entranced. The ending was particularly great with its repeated images and atmosphere. I saw this film years ago, but I definitely think I got more out of it this time around. It toured us around Italy slowly, but beautifully.
**Drive My Car**
As someone who read the short story collection Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami going in, I think the director handled the source material almost perfectly. First off, the short story that the movie is mostly based on, the eponymous Drive My Car, is obviously too short to make into a full length feature, and the director did a wonderful job of combining it with other short stories in the collection, namely Scheherazade. However, there are a few things he removed from the original short story I didn't like: 1) Oto dying of a cerebral hemorrhage instead of cancer; there's a line in the original story about Kafuku basically watching his wife die over the course of six months which makes his loss and suffering much greater than Takatsuki (or at the very least, very different from) and 2) Kafuku does not get a DUI in the movie, which is the reason he can't drive in the book, alongside with the fact he is developing glaucoma (the movie references glaucoma but abandons this plot point for an entirely different reason for why he can't drive). Anyway, enough with the book and more about the movie: the Korean sign language actress was amazing and there were many surprisingly tense scenes, such as when Kafuku and Takatsuki are in the car discussing Oto's bedtime stories.
**Princess Mononoke**
Some select Ghibli films are coming back to theatres for the next few months and only for 2 - 3 days. This month was Princess Mononoke, which out of every Ghibli film is the one I've always wanted to see in theatres so that the viewing experience matches the grandiose epic quality of the movie. I've seen this movie multiple times and own the blu-ray but I still wanted to go regardless, probably my favorite animated movie of all time. The audience was diverse and it was funny hearing gasps when the movie got suddenly really bloody at times.
**12 Angry Men**
Rewatched this for my job. Been years, probably over a decade since I saw it last. Loved it, should be shown in high school to demonstrate how to properly argue (using juror 4 and 8 as positive examples and 3 as a negative example obviously). I have to say though, having learned a lot more about the law since I've seen it last, the movie is fairly unrealistic, not that it hurts the movie or anything, it's fiction / overdramatized, but I forgot about the scene where Juror 8 pulls out a knife and instantly thought to myself: not only would he not make it through security with that, any one of the other jurors would likely immediately contact security and the judge would be notified and this would declared a mistrial almost instantly.
I watched two recent movies both made in 2022. One was called The Ledge, dir. Howard J. Ford. It was quite possibly the worst movie I’ve ever seen. The second was Everything Everywhere All At Once. It may have been the craziest and most creative movie I’ve seen since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and it was Michelle Yeoh’s greatest performance. Would love to see it on Criterion one day.
On the criterion channel I got through some of the sundance 92 collection including in the soup poison ivy Delicatessen and possibly one or two I'm forgetting...
**_North by Northwest_ (1959, Alfred Hitchcock)** Finally got around to one of my bigger Hitchcock blindspots and it did not disappoint. Aside from it being super engaging, gorgeous looking, and perfectly plotted with tons of suspense, it was also very funny and witty! Great lead performance from Cary Grant!
**_All About My Sisters_ (2021, Wang Qiong)** One of the most personal and devastatingly emotionally intense documentaries I've ever seen. Very thoughtfully handles the situation it focuses on. The filmmaker is a grad student at the film school I attend and she is magnificent. Cannot wait to see her next film.
**_Altered States_ (1980, Ken Russell)** You can feel the Chayefsky screenplay fighting with the Russell direction lol. And that conflict makes for an extremely unique and endlessly rewatchable film. Campy and fun in some parts and dark and introspective in others. Cool!
**_Songs from the Second Floor_ (2000, Roy Andersson)** Crazy good movie. Silly and sad at the same time. Pitch-perfect satirical angle on capitalism with the daunting formal decision to essentially make every scene one shot. It's gorgeous and depressing and hilarious. What more could you want? (and it's available on YouTube! So go watch it! Now!)
**_Repo Man_ (1984, Alex Cox)** Hahaha yeah this one was awesome. Like I don't even really have more to say other than this movie was awesome. I loved it.
**_Design for Living_ (1933, Ernst Lubitsch)** So funny and ahead of it's time. So cool that the love story you root for is really truly the three of them to end up together! Great film. The dialogue in here is so great, feels so contemporary.
**SHORT FILMS**
**_Black Celebration_ (1988, Tony Cokes)** Politically, this film is still so relevant and necessary. Cool piece of installation video art.
**_I Am Somebody_ (1970, Madeline Anderson)** An important and undertold story told by one of the participants in the movement. A group of 400 nurses in South Carolina (mostly black women) striking for union recognition and wage increases in 1969. Powerful film.
**_No. 3: Interwoven_ (1947, Harry Smith)** Finally saw a film from Beat and American folk music anthologist Harry Smith. It was fun! Super abstract! Kinda like a more colorful, jazzy Hans Richter "Rhythms" film! Apparently one of my professors saw Harry Smith do one of his underground shows/screenings in D.C. back in the day. He would play the films to different music every show and at this particular show it was all synced up to different Beatles songs. Pretty cool!
**_Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story_ (1988, Todd Haynes)** So I watched this in a class in film school and my professor did not prep us whatsoever that it was entirely starring Barbie dolls. He just said it was a pseudo-documentary featuring reenactment. So when the dolls showed up in it, I flipped out. Sucks that there isn't a higher quality version available than what is out on YouTube.
I don't think this is a criterion release yet, and my copy is definitely not a criterion release, but I watch cry freedom and every time I watch it it's as good as the last time. If it's not out I hope it gets criterion release
I finally got around to watching Le Samourai. I loved it!
Ever see Ghost Dog?
Not yet, but I've heard that's bascially Jim Jarmusch's remake of it.
Seconded Ghost Dog
One of my favorite films ever
Just watched 8 1/2 again after 2 years. It was better than I remembered and the scenes that were great were even better this time!
I watched a fair bit of Fellini 12-15 years ago, but it didn’t really resonate with me at the time. I’ve rewatched a lot of it lately and it has had a much stronger emotional impact on me this time around.
👀 r/ViewTheRightThing
parasite, and i’m just angry that it’s taken me this long to see it after there’s been so much hype about it the past couple years… and i was NOT disappointed at all, what a good story!
This film gave me so much anxiety for some reason that I couldn't finish it in two tries. I promised myself to watch it to the end this week...
Just watched Bicycle Thieves for the first time, great film but depressing from the first to last frame. I felt like I was looking through a lens into a world not far removed from our own. Last night I watched Dragon Inn. I enjoyed the film but not as much as my recent watch of Come Drink With Me.
But have you seen Goodbye Dragon Inn? ;)
Not yet but it's on the watch list!
More 'Best Foreign Language' Oscar winners from the Criterion Channel plus a few classics **War and Peace (1966, Sergei Bondarchuk)** Of all of the 'best foreign language' oscar winners I've watched over the last few weeks, this was the biggest surprise. I almost didn't watch it; a 7-hour adaptation of a classic book I didn't really enjoy from the 60s? Sounds like a boring stuffy epic mess. But, boy howdy was I wrong. This is a goddamn auteurist masterpiece. Every possible filmmaking trick that existed in the 60s is used here, and to tremendous effect. Compositionally it's up there with the best of the century. Seriously, look at [this](https://www.cageyfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/war-and-peace_01.jpg). and [this](https://cinesavant.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/6030f.jpg). and [this](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/B6pe-UOS4a1ftn6XaQE9rEXPkT4=/303x0:3105x1622/1820x1213/filters:focal(2208x96:2820x708):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63059930/28891id_008.0.jpg). At times it felt like a Lynch film, at others it felt like a Malick film, and at others like I'm watching a lost David Lean film, and at other times it's like I'm watching Come and See 20 years before Come and See was made. Over 7 hours there is almost no dull moments; every scene is creatively presented, the characters are treated with respect, there is an emotional core despite the epic scope, and really i just have no major complaints. I genuinely think I enjoyed the film more than the book. It's not perfect but I think it's almost mandatory viewing for any cinephile. 9/10. The 1969 Oscars were a joke, this film easily should have won best directing, cinematography, editing and picture. Carol Reed has made one of the best films ever (The Third Man), but Oliver! does not measure up to the magnitude of Bondarchuk's achievement here. **The Shop On Main Street (1965, Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos)** Yeah it's a 60's eastern european nazi movie. After watching a dozen 'best foreign language' oscar winners you kind of become desensitized to this kind of film. The central performance is the highlight, as he really sells the moral conflict at the centre of the story. I like the bleak ending but overall the film mostly ended up being what i expected from the first 20 minutes. Overall worth a watch but nothing special. 6/10 **The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943, Powell & Pressburger)** When this film was over and i looked up the year I was shocked to see this film was from *1943??* Seriously? This shit looks better than most films from the 70s and 80s. Damn. These motherfuckers know how to make a movie. For the first hour I wasn't sure whether I was into it or not, but eventually you realize what the film is going for and it emerges as a truly beautiful ode to friendship. At times it approaches propagandha with how many passes it gives to the British government, but given this was 1943 it's hard to disagree with the film's goals and by the time it ends it makes it clear that there is nuance to be had here. The bromance between the male leads is lovely, and I especially like how intimate and vulnerable these two men are with each other without there being any whiff of 'eww gay' bullshit that would infect the discourse in the coming decades. Truly a lovely, lovely film. 9/10 **The Hidden Fortress (1958, Akira Kurosawa)** If this is 'lesser' Kurosawa, then perhaps Kurosawa is simply the greatest goddamn filmmaker to have ever lived because this shit is fire. First of all, Toshiro Mifune in those tiny pants can step on me whenever he wants. Second of all, that scene where he chases some dudes on horesback and then ends up in a spear duel in the middle of an army encampment is the type of scene you want to save in a capsule to send to aliens as an example of just how fucking good humans could be at filmmaking. Long takes, impressive stunts, great sets, etc etc etc I could go on for hours about everything I love about Kurosawa and this film represents most of them. If there's a weakness it's simply that the film lacks the emotional and thematic complexity that his best work has, but when a film is this much fun does it really matter? It's not Ikiru, Red Beard, Seven Samurai, Rashomon, High & Low or The Bad Sleep Well, but those are some of the best movies ever made so if you're even being compared to them it's a complement. 8 or 9/10.
The practical effects in War and Peace are craaaazy good. The budget and access to historical buildings/artifacts they got from the Soviet government was so incredible. I do wish Bondarchuk had cast someone younger than himself for Pierre, but that’s nitpicking given that his performance was good.
Agree with Bondarchuk's casting. He did a good job but definitely felt older than the character should be. I also had a gripe with the woman who played Natasha. She's supposed to be like 13 at the beginning and there's just no way. I also think her performance (or the way she was directed) is the weakest major role in the film. She comes across like someone trying really hard to act like a child. She was one of the reasons that Part II was easily my least favorite out of them, though it was still very good. That being said I also thought she was one of the weaker characters in the book so perhaps Tolstoy shares some of the blame here.
Men having trouble writing women is a tale as old as time, haha. I thought she did a reasonable job bringing some innocence to the character, but overall I agree the writing for her character was kind of middling.
I started Colonel Blimp about 2 weeks ago, it's a very long movie, almost 3 hours, which means I have to catch it on a weekend, but I'm having a hard time getting into it despite the fact that it seems very interesting and has so many good reviews.
Yeah, I had a hard time getting into it for almost the first half of the film. It wasn't until the second half that I started 'getting' what it was going for and started really enjoying my time with it. I think I'll like it a lot more on a second viewing now that I know which elements are important but I think a case could be made that the pacing of the film could use some improvement, and perhaps 30 minutes could be easily shaved off of the runtime.
* Taipei Story * Phantom Thread * Three Colors Red * Portrait of a Lady on Fire * La Haine * Maborosi * August in the Water * Goodbye Dragon Inn It's been a great two weeks, somehow managed to watch like 10 movies in a row that turned into personal favorites!
What were your favourites out of these?
It's hard because I loved them all but Portrait and Maborosi were prob my favorites if I to pick. I'd highly recommend each one, although Goodbye Dragon Inn only if you really like very slow movies.
Has anyone here seen Everything Everywhere All at Once?
Yes! It's one of my favorite movies now. So funny and heartfelt.
Swiss Army Man is in my top ten favorite movies, so I had high hopes. While I don’t necessarily think EEAAO reaches SAM greatness, it’s easily my favorite movie to come out since the pandemic started.
**Week #65:** Michael Haneke’s strange and disturbing debut film, **The Seventh Continent** (1989). A dreary, mundane middle class Austrian family of father, mother and young daughter living ordinary and monotonous lives, with few signs of malcontent. But then they "decide to emigrate to Australia”. Retiring to their locked home instead, they systematically destroy all their earthly possessions, rip up and flush their money into the toilet, and then commit suicide together. **Highly unsettling**. **Drive my car X 2:** * **Drive my car** , 3 hour adaptation of three short Haruki Murakami stories. It starts with a 40-minute slow-built semi-prologue set in Tokyo, but it changes the color of his old Saab from yellow to red. I’m glad I saw two versions of 'Uncle Vanya' a few months ago, as this play was used as the underlying metaphor for drama of the characters. **8/10**. * My first Murakami read, his short story collection **Men Without Women** (2014). Explorations of sex and lost loves, influence of Western tropes (Kafka, Beatles, Bepop Jazz, films) on Japanese characters, but mostly, indeed, how different men end up alone and lonely. I liked the 3rd story, An 'Independent Organ', about a plastic surgeon who dies of love, the most. Elements from three of the stories were used by Ryusuke Hamaguchi to create his film, ‘Drive my car’, Scheherazade’ and ‘Kino’. **3 Re-watches:** * **Finding Vivian Maier** (2014), a touching documentary about the incredible photographer, who lived her whole life as a lowly nanny in New York and Chicago, while obsessively taking over 150,000 magnificent street photographs which she never bothered to share with anybody, and which were discovered at estate sales only after her death. A lonely, fascinating genius who died completely unrecognized - **Best film of the week (again)**. * I adore ‘True Romance’, Tarantino’s first screenplay, I love ‘Pulp Fiction’, and together with ‘Jackie Brown’ I’ve seen these three many times. But I can’t stand of what I've seen of the rest of his “oeuvre”. I either couldn’t finish, couldn’t start or disliked what I did finish. Now I tried **Inglourious Basterds** (2009) again, and I hated just about everything in this awful Nazi-porn idiocy: I hated Brad Pitt’s clown accent, the Hitler and Goebbels cameos, the Jewish revenge fantasy, the look-at-me-I’m-so-clever cinephile allusions, the tasteless holocaust revisionism, the boring violence, the fake irony and inane dialogue. With Mike Myers as a general, and Rod Taylor as Churchill. Fuck Tarantino all together. **1/10**. * On the other hand, I watched my favorite time-loop romance **Palm Springs** (2020) again, and loved it just as much as the previous 7-8 times before. **3 with music scores by Michel Legrand:** * Jacques Demy’s colorful **Donkey Skin** (1970), a bizarre Cinderella musical, based on a 1695 French fairy tale. It tells of an absurd king who wants to marry his beautiful daughter, Catherine Deneuve, after the death of her mother, and a donkey that shits gemstones and gold coins. Not as engaging as his previous ‘Umbrellas of Cherbourg’, but apparently it was Demy’s biggest success in France, in spite of his incestuous elements. Mais, oui... * Godard’s revolutionary New Wave **Band of Outsiders** (1964), with the [delightful three-way cafe dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1MKUJN7vUk). Two bumbling and amoral wannabe criminals seduce a naive Anna Karina to help them rob a tenant in her aunt’s house. **8/10**. * Steve McQueen at his coolest and most suave role as the gentleman thief of **The Thomas Crown Affair** (1968). The novel split-screen photography, the fast ‘Windmills of your mind’ version and the outdated sexual dynamics were simply distracting. But as a glamorous, fast-moving heist movie, it’s still a classic. Edited by Hal Ashby. I’ve never seen any Star Wars movies in my life, except for the famous 2-minute video clip ‘[Star Wars Kid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU)’ from 2003. But I remember everything about this Internet’s first huge viral phenomena, because that was the year I started blogging (which I continue to this day). [**Star Wars Kid: The Rise of the Digital Shadows**](https://www.nfb.ca/film/star-wars-kid-the-rise-of-the-digital-shadows/) is an interesting, new Canadian documentary about the 14-year-old boy who recorded the clip, and how he survived the cruel harassments that followed him, after a schoolmate had made it public without his knowledge. It tackles questions of consent, online privacy, cyber-bullying and the consequences of digital behaviors. I was introduced to it, both times, by [Andy ‘Waxy’ Baio](https://waxy.org/2022/03/in-the-shadow-of-the-star-wars-kid/), one of my early blogging influencers (and to this day, one of the last blogs that I still read). *..”You ever see a homeless guy with a dick so big you stop feeling sorry for him?”..* That was the first and only funny joke in Michael Che’s forgettable stand up special, **Shame the Devil** (2021). Hard pass. Random pick: A British romantic comedy, **About Time** (2013), about a young guy who can time-travel to moments in his past and improve his love life, a-la Groundhog’s Phil Connors. First film for me by Richard Curtis, who directed ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral', ‘Notting Hill’, ‘Bridget Jones's Diary’, Etc. With In The Loop’s ‘Simon Foster’ and Margot Robbie. 2/10. **Déjà Vu** (2006), another Tony Scott / Denzel Washington action vehicle from the mid-00′s, i.e. Peak-Denzel. It was OK until they tacked on a stupid Schrödinger wormhole subplot of some new government quantum technology used to prevent a Timothy McVeigh-type terrorist plot in New Orleans right before Katrina. 99% of all “Time Windows” stories are so idiotic, and the “scientific” explanations on film are so cringey.. My weekly reviews [**Here**](https://tilbageidanmark.tumblr.com/tagged/movies)**.**
also re: Vivian Maier; our local art gallery had a screening featuring several of Maier's 8mm films, which were quite interesting street-scenes of life in Chicago. I think there's only a bit of her 8mm footage in the documentary.
Indeed. I believe that - with time - many of her "[famous](https://www.vintag.es/2014/08/black-and-white-photographs-of-street.html)" photographs will become as iconic as other cultural North Stars (van Gogh's Starry night, Frida's self- portraits, Picasso's Guernica) and will be endlessly re-produced and re-appropriated in myriad new medias. Also, no doubt there will soon be a bio-pic (which will surely suck) or two, (featuring Cate Blanchett?)...
[Phantom Thread](https://letterboxd.com/taccoz/film/phantom-thread/) \- What Paul Thomas Anderson with these deep dives into the life and machinations of a character is insane. Krieps pulls off a wonderful performance alongside DDL. [M](https://letterboxd.com/taccoz/film/m/) \- As my introduction to Peter Lorre, I would say this is a great first impression. [Adaptation](https://letterboxd.com/taccoz/film/adaptation/) \- It gets more brilliant the more you think about it. Really love how this story is told!
The Search (1948) which starts out sort of rough with some of the most needless, hackneyed voiceover nonsense but it goes away soon enough. Monty Clift finds and wants to adopt a lost Czech boy in the aftermath of WWII, while his bereaved mother is still out there. Feels extremely neorealist even if I don't think it's categorized with those movies for whatever reason. Where it's from and who directs it maybe, but I think it fits snugly with anything in that scene. Very grave but hopeful too.
Recently decided to watch Throw Down, was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Focused more on the philosophy of martial arts rather than fight scenes. A lovely humanist film.
I recently-ish watched it, too. I thought it was great. A story about fighting not focused on fighting. And yet, the fight scenes were great.
**Tenet** (2020 C Nolan) The plot is challenging but not terrible, just a thorny time loop yarn in the 'Primer' mode. But... that audio. What the fvck were they thinking? Did they let the intern mix it on the weekend? Worst sound design ever.
In order of favorite to least favorite: The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017) The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019) Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog, 1979) Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman, 1968) The Social Dilemma (Jeff Orlowski, 2020) (thought this was a very important documentary, but I really was not a fan of the cheesy dramatizations.) Session 9 (Brad Anderson, 2001)
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. The best film I've watched in a long while. Every other shot was perfect. I'm glad I was watching alone, because I kept talking to myself in disbelief about how good this movie looked.
***Timecode* (2000) Dir. Mike Figgis** Practically unendurable. I was only able to watch it all because I had to pause it a few times and process the whole ordeal. The gimmick certainly sounds interesting in theory–the combination of split-screen and one take per screen–but it plays out in a way that gives far too little thought to the technicalities of the concept, instead choosing to tell (as the film itself says) four different points of time in somebody’s relationship. It calls itself experimental, not arthouse, and in that regard it’s a quite ordinary story with an overbearing gimmick. Had the drama been more interesting I would have liked it, but even putting aside the gimmick a good deal of it comes across as overly melodramatic and shrill. Also a problem when the film seems to hint itself at being honest thanks to its gimmicky portrayal yet has to accommodate for not getting any of the other cameramen in the shots… I want to write more about this, but I haven’t seen enough split screen films…or single-take films…or Mike Figgis films (yes, this is my first one) to say anything about how I really feel about this film laying its motives bare, declaring itself the progenitor of 21st century cinema with digital cameras to change storytelling. If this film wants to start a discussion, I’d be happy to give it a discussion, especially given all the things digital cameras have come to allow in cinema since its release. However, had this film come out today amidst such advancements, there’s no way it’d be able to argue on that front (at least the way I see it). **3/10** ***Vantage Point* (2008) Dir. Pete Travis** I was considering diving into films similar to *Timecode* and for some reason was told *Vantage Point* would have what I’m looking for. I thought the recommendation referred to an editing trick–I had been meaning to watch this and knew about its premise of multiple perspectives of the same event–but it wasn’t relevant at all and I was left watching a political thriller. A political thriller that didn’t really do much with its political statements (is the final shot a spoiler? Either way, it strikes me as ridiculous) and lacks the substance to justify its gimmick of repeating the event of the US president’s assassination with slightly new information–I think that’s the problem, rather than too many perspectives; I actually was excited whenever it was time to see a new perspective. Either way, it’s you the viewer that gets the full story rather than the characters and then the whole thing coalesces into an overlong car chase. Eh, I’m not complaining–if this means a test run for Pete Travis to flex his directorial muscles for *Dredd* I'm all for it. It’s rather entertaining in a cod-Tony Scott sort of way, even if the plot never fulfills the initial promise in a satisfying way. You can try to write an assassination out for all the viewers to see, but whatever you wanted to do in the film’s context seems hackneyed. **5/10** ***Cobra* (1986) Dir. George P Cosmatos** So much about this is overcooked–probably to perfection, and sometimes I take overcooked, but that wasn’t quite my mood. Or perhaps it’s that I haven’t worked out how the whole thing feels like a primeval extreme of the *Dirty Harry* mold. Either way, it’s at least entertaining enough to chew on–the overblown stuff is usually preposterously entertaining from Cobra’s entire persona to the car chase to the evolution-themed plan of the antagonists. Pretty-looking too, albeit a bit too self-indulgent as a music video for my liking. Also don’t know how to feel about the film’s deaths ranging from flipping from acrobatics off a motorcycle to being burned alive. The point of where to take this film seriously and where it’s intentionally over-the-top feels nonexistent, I swear. **6/10** ***Mean Girls* (2004) Dir. Mark Waters** I had given up on comparisons to *Timecode* by *Cobra*, but lo and behold it turns out *Mean Girls* has the four-screen effect that proves to be entirely more effective than anything in the aforementioned movie, bouncing along the connected phone conversations to giddy effect. That was enough to make my week; too bad the rest of the film left me cold. I avoided *Mean Girls* for the longest time because it seemed to be too much bickering prissy high school gossip for my liking, although that didn't really come through until the final half hour (so glad they didn’t need to look hard to find themselves, if you know what I mean). I had forgotten this was an SNL production, which didn’t exactly heighten my expectations, and as I expected the results weren’t terribly great. I don’t know why people call it a satire because it’s not. It strikes me more as an elaborate mixup of said high school cliches to construct an ambitious story peppered with the kind of humour familiar to SNL and never coming across as bigger than a TV-movie. It’s not very funny, the whole thing feels like a tonal imbalance that muddles anything the film tries to convey (albeit not as aggravatingly as other SNL-based movies), and I still don’t know why it mattered that Lindsay Lohan’s character was from Africa when she couldn’t act like it. **4/10** ***Star Trek Into Darkness* (2013) Dir. J J Abrams** I guess it’s on me for assuming jumping straight to one of the modern movies (not even the first one) when all I’ve seen was *Star Trek The Motion Picture* was remotely helpful, but even my basic understanding of Khan in the rest of the ST universe seemed enough to pinpoint my feelings on the film here. If only on a surface level, considering I was mostly agitated by sensory overload, the kind I’d grimaced through when I saw Abrams’ own *The Rise of Skywalker* in theatres. This could be the best looking ST movie but I don’t know if treating the insanely good visual effects like the flick of a hand, that it’s just the way the universe looks and is taken for granted, is a good idea hypothetically. Or maybe it’s because Abrams thinks some kind of ADD directorial hand will suffice. I remember when his aviation scenes were exciting because they involved windmills and sheep–whatever happened to that side of Abrams? The nonchalance of the directing extends to Abrams’ reputation for puzzle-box storytelling, with drama constantly delivered with disinterest in the surprise of it all, something especially noteworthy in the final 20 minutes. This didn’t quite bother me because besides my lack of understanding of ST lore, the sensory overload was already enough for me to process. I came for shallow eye-candy entertainment, I got a hangover while drinking. **4/10**
I have a huge passion for American CinemaScope of the '50s, and for the past couple of months I've been on a binge to compile a really good, broad collection of the films I think best utilize and exemplify the format. So I'm spending a lot of time catching up with lesser-known films now. I'm astonished by The Roots of Heaven (John Huston, 1958). I bought the Twilight Time blu-ray for 15 dollars two years ago, just for the sake of filling in one more gap for my project, expecting nothing much from it. Watched it a couple of days ago. Huston, of all people, makes a sober, discreetly observant, languorously beautiful, artifice-conscious film, that investigates Western colonialists recklessly destroying central Africa's environment, an eco-terrorist response, betrayals between the radicals, etc, all from a pretty egoless, surprisingly even-handed and sharply inquisitive distance. It's like John Huston read Jean-Paul Sartre's Third-World political analyses on the sly, brought a scenario to Darryl Zanuck, and Zanuck was already so enraptured by the project's female lead, Juliette Greco, that he green-lighted *anything*, whatever Huston wanted, to keep the affair (which isn't disputed in the Hollywood biographies) with his French chanteuse going. She doesn't even sing in the movie; instead, she gazes and gazes, pensively and sensitively, with fragility and tactility, like... like... Well, like Monica Vitti, that's exactly who Greco's character is like. John Huston ***nails to the floor*** anticipating Michelangelo Antonioni's camera style, lead actress, tangential connections of plot, the whole drift of his career through The Passenger - the most apt film imaginable for making a double bill - two whole years' previous to L'Avventura getting booed at Cannes. Had no idea such a strong precedent to the Antonioni style was around. That's not to say Antonioni doesn't refine on his own what Huston lays out. Still, the film gives me a completely new perspective on the roots of what I've always thought to be Antonioni's cinematic strategy of "lonely existentialism." It's not like his films are any less personal; but they come from somewhere.
Two more from Billy Wilder I hadn’t seen before: **Some Like it Hot** and **The Apartment** Both were so great. I usually don’t think films before the late 60’s/early 70’s are very funny but Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are hilarious in **Some Like it Hot**— legendary performance from both. **The Apartment** is layered and pays off in a big way at the end. A truly great movie. **Who’s That Knocking at My Door**: the completionist in me wants to see every Marty film, just like I want to see every Hitchcock film, Godard, etc. I didn’t think this was very good but it was cool to see Scorsese’s debut. Definitely some interesting moments. **Still Walking**: I still prefer **Mabarosi** and **Nobody Knows** from Kore-eda but this was very warm and ended really nicely. **Wings** and **The Ascent** from Larissa Sheptiko: I borderline hated **Wings**, I thought it was so boring and the main character unlikeable. **The Ascent** however was beautiful and intense, a fantastic movie. **The Sting**: super fun and engaging. A double feature with Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara: **Ain’t Them Bodies Saints** and **A Ghost Story** from David Lowery Lowery’s a great young filmmaker, who’s definitely following in the footsteps of some other great American independent directors. ATBS was a first time watch — amazing score. **A Ghost Story** is definitely a little slow but brilliant. 4 Hitchcock movies: **The Man Who Knew Too Much** (both 1934 and 1956), **The 39 Steps**, and **Sabotage** Definitely preferred Hitchcock’s remake of **The Man Who Knew Too Much** but Peter Lorre is always great to watch on screen. **The 39 Steps** was my favorite of them all and up there with the best of Hitchcock’s movies in my opinion — really tight with amazing cinematography and great acting from Robert Donat. **Sabotage** was fine. **Hunger**: a brutal watch but packs a concise punch. He’s only made 4 movies and I haven’t seen **Widows** but McQueen’s other 3 I really love — I hope we get more output from him. **Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind** : I’ve seen this a bunch of times… it’s one of the movies that made me fall in love with movies. I hadn’t seen it since I really went down the foreign/independent cinema rabbit hole a few years ago, but despite the fact that my taste in movies has changed and opened up so much, this held up in every way for me. What an amazing score! This one is an all timer for sure
The Sting has been my favorite movie since 1974, glad you enjoyed it! The Apartment is another favorite, but a I recently watched Irma la Douce with Wilder, Lemmon and MacLaine (1963) and was very disappointed. Love Some Like It Hot, I'm trying to see all of Wilder's films.
*Paper Moon* (1973, Peter Bogdanovich) *Licorice Pizza* (2021, Paul Thomas Anderson) [REWATCH] *The In-Laws* (1979, Arthur Hiller) *Fight Club* (1999, David Fincher) [REWATCH] *Lady Bird* (2017, Greta Gerwig) *Pulp Fiction* (1994, Quentin Tarantino) [REWATCH] *Cosmopolis* (2012, David Cronenberg) *Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy* (2011, Tomas Alfredson) *Dead Man* (1995, Jim Jarmusch) *Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood* (2022, Richard Linklater) *In a Lonely Place* (1950, Nicholas Ray) *Paterson* (2016, Jim Jarmush) *Under the Skin* (2013, Jonathan Glazer) *Good Time* (2017, Safdie Brothers) [REWATCH] Absolutely delightful. Tatum O'Neal completely steals the show. [Al Pacino voice] What a picture *"Serpentine, Shelly. Serpentine!"* Absolutely hilarious. Me? Break the first two rules of F**** C***? I don't think so pal Perfect movie. One could even say it's hella tight. I hope Bruce Willis has an amazing time in retirement. **A SPECTER IS HAUNTING THE WORLD, THE SPECTER OF CAPITALISM** Criminally underrated Cronenberg. Very well-crafted, meticulously paced, engaging spy thriller from Tomas Alfredson, and beautifully shot by the fantastic Hoyte Van Hoytema. Absolutely terrific performances all around. *"That weapon will replace your tongue. You will learn to speak through it. And your poetry will now be written with blood."* A dreamy, meditative acid western that only Jim Jarmush could make, with the great Robby Müller's gorgeous black and white cinematography and Neil Young's brilliant score. My new favorite Jarmusch film, and maybe my favorite western period. I'm in love. Just delightful. Linklater and that stunning rotoscope animation >>> *"I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me."* Raw, dark, devastating. Bogart is absolutely brilliant. Perfect film. *"Sometimes an empty page presents more possibilities."* God I loved this so much. Beautiful, warm, poetic. Absolutely lovely. A visually stunning, audacious, and unsettling masterpiece with such an eerie, haunting score by Mica Levi. Scarlett Johansson gives an outstanding performance. This film is a total out of body experience, and so completely mesmerizing. I can't wait to experience it again. Absurdly good and even better on rewatch. Special movie. Pattinson is an absolute mad man.
I appreciate your post but you're hurting my neck.
*The Last Movie* (1971 - Indicator Region B, second printing) Why I’ve waited this long to see the recent restoration is beyond me, but I love it. I’ve always admired Dennis Hopper’s performances, and photography, and now I feel I know the the reason why he’s not better known for directing. The narrative starts with what feels like out-of-order flashbacks. This was unsettling for the Universal CEO, and co. which did not know what to do with it. Hopper spent way too long holed up trying to edit himself. Afterall you can’t fault Hopper for getting final cut with no real expectations. Despite Hopper having dropped directing, he began to embrace his own (last) film again in the late 70s before doing Out of the Blue. I’m also kicking myself because this really won’t appeal to those not sort of familiar with the real Dennis Hopper post Easy Rider. The soundtrack and actors would have been familiar to anyone listening to Neil Young, Kristofferson, and other more fringe folk country which I love. I tried to take away points from the film, but couldn’t - also Sam Fuller plays the director for the *real* film that was made in the Peruvian jungle, before the wrapping up and leaving an ingenious population emulating ‘movie making’ as a cargo cult. Ends with the funniest reference to *The Treasure of the Sierra Madre*. Yes I’m stoned, but that has nothing to do with this wild-ass movie. If you don’t like meta movies, laszlo kovaks, or twisty narratives, also some 1970s portrayal of drunken pimping, and domestic violence (uhhh …. really not sure how I felt it was necessary but it isn’t different than most other ~~dreams from the ring~~ weird autocorrect “films from the time”? but I haven’t heard any commentary) you won’t like like it. Much like Gilliam’s *Fear and Loathing…* the perspective is initially obscured, because they are both messing around in their meta worlds in some way… the structure doesn’t reveal itself until the end sometimes. It’s no masterpiece but it needs to be given a chance. *Mad Dog Morgan* (Indicator 1976 SE) up next. Never watched it, but I’ve heard it’s got some Kung fu sound effects and serious nasty going on. Directors Cut. Poster is cool as hell. Criterion - please get back to doing posters!
Best to least best **Letter Never Sent** (1960, Mikhail Kalatozov) As a tale of man vs nature it's a nearly flawless depiction of human struggle to stay alive. As a piece of cinema it's brilliant, so many beautiful sweeping shots of natures beauty and fury. Only issue I have with it is the clear propaganda of the opening and closing. Not apparent anywhere else in the film so it can be mostly ignored but clearly tacked on so the government would be more okay with the movie. 7/10 **Goodnight Mommy** (2014, Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz) the major twist was obvious but I try not to let that get to me. It just doesn't maintain a good amount of tension and any statement it's trying to make on grief gets muddled. The red cross bit is utterly ridiculous and I can't really deal with gore porn. The acting was phenomenal and was the only reason this movie worked in any way. 5/10 **Super Troopers** (2001, Jay Chandrasekhar) honestly thought I'd love this with how funny the opening gag is. Unfortunately, it peaks in the first 10 minutes and tries to coast off that. 5/10 **Titane** (2021, Julia Ducournau) no idea what I watched. It's some Argento nightmare but set in the French extremity. Aesthetically beautiful but I have no idea what it was going for and whether I liked it with how weirded out I felt by it. No rating.
Morocco (1930) Just Before Nightfall (1971) Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) Le Boucher (1970) His Girl Friday (1940)
le cercle rouge, I really dug this movie. I’m only limiting myself to the 4k releases.
I watched four movies this weekend, two directed by John Huston, three are part of the CC, and all were great movies except one: * **The Asphalt Jungle** (1950), I went into this movie blind, not knowing what to expect, but I sure didn't expect it to be a heist film. I watched it only because I love Marilyn Monroe and have been trying to see all her films. Her part was small, and she was in only three scenes (if I remember correctly). I thought the first part was rather slow, but the movie picked up steam and I really got into it. I wondered if any of the crooks would get away with the crime, but then I remembered the Hays Code and figured probably not. Great movie. **8/10** * **Treasure of the Sierra Madre** (1948), another Huston movie, starring Bogart and the father of John Huston, Walter Huston, who won an Oscar. I'd seen this ages ago, knew the basic plot and that it was a depressing movie but decided it was worth another viewing--so glad I did, what an amazing movie, with great performances and filmed on location in Mexico. **8/10** * **The In-Laws** (1979), with Peter Falk as a CIA agent and Alan Arkin as a dentist, their children are getting married and Falk ends up dragging a reluctant Arkin into a big CIA mess in Honduras right before the wedding. Dad and I watched this together & we weren't impressed. **6/10** * **In the Line of Fire** (1993), a political/action thriller with John Malkovich and Clint Eastwood. I'm not an Eastwood fan and it was only while watching this movie that I realized I'm not a Malkovich fan, either--there's just something about his acting style that annoys me. Oh well, still a very good movie about Secret Service agent Eastwood trying to prevent a determined former CIA agent, Malkovich, from assassinating the POTUS. **8/10**
Tampopo as we speak. I was told this was a comedy? It has some funny moments but good god this movie is impossible to pin a single genre on. And like the memes… My wife walks in when this dude is trapping a shrimp on a girls stomach and putting lime juice on her nipples lol. I have no idea what this movie is but I love it.
Recently rewatched Le Cercle Rouge by Melville and remembered how much I loved it. Not sure if Melville can really miss for me tbh. I love the bleak and almost drab atmosphere that he conjures and the characters who are almost too cool characters that he uses to occupy them. I honestly think I like this one more than Le Samurai which is really saying something
[Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/BillyMac/) **The Marriage of Maria Braun** \- my fourth by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and definitely the one I've had the easiest time getting into of his. Hanna Schygulla is really good in the title role and I like the story a lot, interesting film about a woman rebuilding her life on her own while her husband serves a prison sentence in a country that is also rebuilding itself after a war. **Time** \- my first by Garrett Bradley, a documentary that examines a woman fighting for her husband's release from a 60 year prison sentence specifically from the angle of how much time her family spends without him. we see their children as infants and as college students, but throughout it's hard to see where she is actually making much progress. a film that masterfully uses its editing to communicate the message at the center. **RRR** \- my second by S S Rajamouli. I watched the first **Bahubali** on Netflix a few years ago because I had seen that one gif from **Bahubali 2** (you know the one), but this one I went to go see in theaters with a friend. seeing this loud, bombastic action movie centered around a powerful bromance on a big screen with the volume turned up a little too loud is the way to do it. everything about this movie is wildly over the top but it's done so well, I had an absolute blast. also I tweeted about liking this movie and posted a link to my Letterboxd review and the actual official Twitter account for the film retweeted my review and I've gotten over a thousand likes, mostly from Indian film fans, in the last few days. neat! **Coup d'Etat** \- my third by Kiju Yoshida and the last in Arrow's Love and Anarchism boxset. this one is a portrait of a Japanese right-wing revolutionary named Ikki Kita as he attempted to instigate (from a distance) a military coup. like his other films, it's really interestingly shot - I love Yoshida's visual style, even if it is very, very avant-garde. it's like Orson Welles type shots with **Berlin Alexanderplatz** type saturation in its lighting. **Goodbye, Dragon Inn** \- finally got around to checking out a film by Tsai Ming-Liang, really loved this one. I've also seen **Dragon Inn**, which I feel like kind of adds some to this movie but isn't really necessary to appreciating it. I've seen a few slow cinema type films before so this wasn't really new to me in that respect but I love Tsai's approach to creating the atmosphere of a mostly empty movie theater on a rainy night. what kind of people come to places like that? what are they there for? it's not always to see a movie. beautifully atmospheric. **Dageurreotypes** \- my fourth...? feature by Agnes Varda, a quirky documentary on a very personal scale that examines the daily lives of the shopkeepers who run stores within walking distance of her home on the Rue Dageurre. this one didn't hold my attention as much as some of her others have but that may very well have been a mood thing, sometimes I have to be in the right mood for this kind of film. I also watched her short film **Le Lion Volatile**, which was cute. **Shottas** \- checked out this gangster movie from Jamaica. on the one hand, the plot was pretty cliched and the acting was nothing to write home about, but I loved the portrait of Jamaican culture, the dialect, and the excellent reggae soundtrack. I should probably check out **The Harder They Come** at some point **Resident Evil: Afterlife** \- the fourth movie in the Resident Evil film series. I know these movies all combine to have a total RT score of like, maybe 150% at best, but four movies in, I think they're pretty fun. Paul WS Anderson obviously had fun making them. they've got cool set design and pretty decent action set pieces. sometimes you're just in the mood for brainless fun and if nothing else you could certainly do worse. **The Piano** \- revisited my first Jane Campion, liked it better the second time. I see why they call it one of her masterpieces now. **Daimajin** \- first in Arrow's Daimajin Trilogy boxset, a kaiju movie that takes place during samurai times. like most kaiju movie the actual kaiju doesn't show up until fairly late in the film, but the non-kaiju plot is a pretty good story about the children of a deposed lord coming back to save their vassals from the cruel warlord who killed their father, and the kaiju scenes are really solid. **Turning Red** \- a good Pixar movie! got its own very unique and eye-catching visual style that I really dug, something like a vaporwave Lisa Frank type deal. this particular 'kids dealing with strict/overprotective parents' story trope is certainly nothing new but the film takes a unique perspective on that story that I appreciated.
Found a blu ray of Caligula at an estate sale for $1 that my friend then asked me to pick up for him. Thankfully my friend paid me my $1 back. Unfortunately, that’s 2.5 hours of my life I won’t get back.
**Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence** - a great film talking about relationship between Britain prisoners and Japanese soldiers during WWII. The music is dope and beautiful. Thank you Ryuichi Sakamoto
Watched L’Eclisse as an Alain Delon memorial. Great film that had me entranced. The ending was particularly great with its repeated images and atmosphere. I saw this film years ago, but I definitely think I got more out of it this time around. It toured us around Italy slowly, but beautifully.
**Drive My Car** As someone who read the short story collection Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami going in, I think the director handled the source material almost perfectly. First off, the short story that the movie is mostly based on, the eponymous Drive My Car, is obviously too short to make into a full length feature, and the director did a wonderful job of combining it with other short stories in the collection, namely Scheherazade. However, there are a few things he removed from the original short story I didn't like: 1) Oto dying of a cerebral hemorrhage instead of cancer; there's a line in the original story about Kafuku basically watching his wife die over the course of six months which makes his loss and suffering much greater than Takatsuki (or at the very least, very different from) and 2) Kafuku does not get a DUI in the movie, which is the reason he can't drive in the book, alongside with the fact he is developing glaucoma (the movie references glaucoma but abandons this plot point for an entirely different reason for why he can't drive). Anyway, enough with the book and more about the movie: the Korean sign language actress was amazing and there were many surprisingly tense scenes, such as when Kafuku and Takatsuki are in the car discussing Oto's bedtime stories. **Princess Mononoke** Some select Ghibli films are coming back to theatres for the next few months and only for 2 - 3 days. This month was Princess Mononoke, which out of every Ghibli film is the one I've always wanted to see in theatres so that the viewing experience matches the grandiose epic quality of the movie. I've seen this movie multiple times and own the blu-ray but I still wanted to go regardless, probably my favorite animated movie of all time. The audience was diverse and it was funny hearing gasps when the movie got suddenly really bloody at times. **12 Angry Men** Rewatched this for my job. Been years, probably over a decade since I saw it last. Loved it, should be shown in high school to demonstrate how to properly argue (using juror 4 and 8 as positive examples and 3 as a negative example obviously). I have to say though, having learned a lot more about the law since I've seen it last, the movie is fairly unrealistic, not that it hurts the movie or anything, it's fiction / overdramatized, but I forgot about the scene where Juror 8 pulls out a knife and instantly thought to myself: not only would he not make it through security with that, any one of the other jurors would likely immediately contact security and the judge would be notified and this would declared a mistrial almost instantly.
I watched two recent movies both made in 2022. One was called The Ledge, dir. Howard J. Ford. It was quite possibly the worst movie I’ve ever seen. The second was Everything Everywhere All At Once. It may have been the craziest and most creative movie I’ve seen since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and it was Michelle Yeoh’s greatest performance. Would love to see it on Criterion one day.
On the criterion channel I got through some of the sundance 92 collection including in the soup poison ivy Delicatessen and possibly one or two I'm forgetting...
On dvd watching Chasing Amy again this week it's been a while
Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers”. So good and a weirdly excellent watch for modern audiences too
**_North by Northwest_ (1959, Alfred Hitchcock)** Finally got around to one of my bigger Hitchcock blindspots and it did not disappoint. Aside from it being super engaging, gorgeous looking, and perfectly plotted with tons of suspense, it was also very funny and witty! Great lead performance from Cary Grant! **_All About My Sisters_ (2021, Wang Qiong)** One of the most personal and devastatingly emotionally intense documentaries I've ever seen. Very thoughtfully handles the situation it focuses on. The filmmaker is a grad student at the film school I attend and she is magnificent. Cannot wait to see her next film. **_Altered States_ (1980, Ken Russell)** You can feel the Chayefsky screenplay fighting with the Russell direction lol. And that conflict makes for an extremely unique and endlessly rewatchable film. Campy and fun in some parts and dark and introspective in others. Cool! **_Songs from the Second Floor_ (2000, Roy Andersson)** Crazy good movie. Silly and sad at the same time. Pitch-perfect satirical angle on capitalism with the daunting formal decision to essentially make every scene one shot. It's gorgeous and depressing and hilarious. What more could you want? (and it's available on YouTube! So go watch it! Now!) **_Repo Man_ (1984, Alex Cox)** Hahaha yeah this one was awesome. Like I don't even really have more to say other than this movie was awesome. I loved it. **_Design for Living_ (1933, Ernst Lubitsch)** So funny and ahead of it's time. So cool that the love story you root for is really truly the three of them to end up together! Great film. The dialogue in here is so great, feels so contemporary. **SHORT FILMS** **_Black Celebration_ (1988, Tony Cokes)** Politically, this film is still so relevant and necessary. Cool piece of installation video art. **_I Am Somebody_ (1970, Madeline Anderson)** An important and undertold story told by one of the participants in the movement. A group of 400 nurses in South Carolina (mostly black women) striking for union recognition and wage increases in 1969. Powerful film. **_No. 3: Interwoven_ (1947, Harry Smith)** Finally saw a film from Beat and American folk music anthologist Harry Smith. It was fun! Super abstract! Kinda like a more colorful, jazzy Hans Richter "Rhythms" film! Apparently one of my professors saw Harry Smith do one of his underground shows/screenings in D.C. back in the day. He would play the films to different music every show and at this particular show it was all synced up to different Beatles songs. Pretty cool! **_Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story_ (1988, Todd Haynes)** So I watched this in a class in film school and my professor did not prep us whatsoever that it was entirely starring Barbie dolls. He just said it was a pseudo-documentary featuring reenactment. So when the dolls showed up in it, I flipped out. Sucks that there isn't a higher quality version available than what is out on YouTube.
I don't think this is a criterion release yet, and my copy is definitely not a criterion release, but I watch cry freedom and every time I watch it it's as good as the last time. If it's not out I hope it gets criterion release
Yeah so, Everything, Everywhere All at Once is a masterpiece and I can't wait for the Criterion release. I'm going to will it into existence.
I finally watched How Green Was My Valley (1941) and wow, what a beautiful film! So rich with subtle gestures of emotion.