SCFZ

Our Mutual Friend - Dickens Silk Stocking Murders - Berkeley (unfinished because it was too painfully obvious who did it) Ratner's Star - DeLillo (unfinished but I got further than on other attempts) Hangover Square - Hamilton Dictionary Of The Khazars - Pavic The Dain Curse - Hammett The Pickwick P...

SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR, Roy Andersson's masterwork beheld on the big screen at the Museum of the Moving Image, and as relevant and powerful as ever. MOMI is running a complete Andersson retrospective, including the elusive GILIAP which bad boy I'll be damn sure to not get away from me. Alas, so...

A PERFECT SPY by John le Carre, re-read after a viewing of Errol Morris' film of le Carre's autobiographical THE PIGEON TUNNEL. I remember being impressed with the book of THE PIGEON TUNNEL, which struck me as being better than the same factual material fictionalized into A PERFECT SPY, which left m...

DiCaprio's performance reminded me of nothing so much as those memes of Grumpy Cat.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON -- whatever possessed Scorsese to allow DiCaprio to mug so ferociously?

Watched MEGAN, the little horror about the mechanical doll who grows out of her creators' control. Done with enough wit and intelligence to make me not entirely mind how predictable it really is.

Sidney Lumet's PRINCE OF THE CITY, which I'd been hoping was an overlooked under-appreciated masterpiece, and sorry, no. Lumet apparently aimed for a cast of unknowns, and seems to have taken this policy too far, as he wound up with, by and large, a cast unable to rise to the level of Lumet's other ...

FInished off ULYSSES, and was left rather wobbly by that final chapter. Needed something less earth-shattering so, after a couple of days, I moved on to Donald E. Westlake's DON'T ASK, a comic crime novel about attempts to steal the preserved femur of a saint from the UN mission of a small East Euro...

Friedkin's SORCERER, which is about 85% successful I think. Handsomely done on almost all counts. I can't say why Mr. Scheider never manages to really come alive as completely as he might, there's a remove there that keeps the movie at something of a distance. The big scenes on the rickety bridge ar...

I've been going through ULYSSES, after having read THE ODYSSEY. This is my second read, and I'm enjoying the good stuff, and liking that I'm finding stuff I couldn't have noted before. Any appearance of Simon Dedalus is a treat to read.

APOCALYPSE NOW FINAL CUT at the Paris Theater, which was taken over by Netflix a couple years back as a vehicle for their releases, as part of a very well-attended BIG AND LOUD series of films. The old magic still works for me, at least, and apparently for lots of the audience. I heard a lot of gasp...

Scorsese's AFTER HOURS, in the new Criterion 4K, a film I had never seen and just couldn't work up any particular interest in while watching it. I'll read up a bit and give it another go, but I just never really found very much interesting about it.

Gyorgy Feher's TWILIGHT, a fascinating and troubling movie of great beauty and creepiness, almost but not quite ruined by the stupidity of the LIncoln Center Film Society's Gilman Theater. The bright floor lights and exit signs cast a light that was clearly visible upon the edges and corners of the ...

PICKWICK PAPERS, finally making headway after all those years of false starts. Sam Weller really does kick the book into gear.

EDIT: I guess the nay-sayers are noir fanbros, protecting their franchise. the noir fanbros don't even care much for the '40s version, and neither the book nor spain's comic adaptation seem to be all that well known either. mostly everyone just found del toro's approach to the material laughable (o...

HANGOVER SQUARE by Patrick Hamilton, after having seen the film a few weeks back. A more patient step by step picture of George Bone's dissolution than the more outlandishly romantic film, set in just barely-pre-war London.

Still, it's hard to entirely hate a film with a character named Professor Dubious.

Watched TAR and was not impressed. I liked Fields' earlier film a lot, and was surprised to see how frigid and sterile this whole enterprise was. Has Fields sold his soul to Christopher Nolan?

I much preferred RINGS OF POWER to that HBO thing about the Dragons which only got stupider and more formulaic with each episode. Sure, RINGS is a whole lot of backstory, but it was handsomely done, I thought. And the final episode of the first season had a splendid sequence basically showing Galadr...

THE LAST METRO
BELLE DE JOUR
TIME REGAINED
UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG

I saw MODEL SHOP a few years back, and as a vehicle for Gary Lockwood's blue-jeaned ass, it has few rivals. Otherwise, I didn't get much out of it except sadness at what Demy decided to do to one of his characters. I watched SCARLET STREET last night for the first time ever, and liked it mainly, but...

And on the other end of the spectrum, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS was on at Metrograph, in what turned out to be a pretty good 35mm print. I hadn't seen it on a big screen in years, and found the old magic to still work. So glad to have been able to see this again.

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, is a strange movie. It continues Cameron's way of making sequels that are bigger louder and uglier than their original films, a habit that began with his ALIENS, that replaced Ridley Scott's mood piece with bigger guns and biceps and machinery. I can't deny being drawn in t...

now i find out i should've watched lola first? apparently it's a trilogy? oh well, more to look forward to it is sad but weird to say more 'realist' than many hollywood musicals. even with people singing the entire time. i hate lala land even more now :P edit: several 'critics' on twitter say it's ...

MURDER AT THE VANITIES -- Mitchell Leisen's pre-Code musical mystery thingamabob, with Jack Oakie and Victor McLaglen investigating tangled webs backstage at the opening night of Earl Carroll's Vanities, a musical revue along the lines of the Ziegfeld Follies. Interesting in being one of the very fe...

In order of viewing, January at the top: THIS IS SPINAL TAP SEVEN SAMURAI DEAD RINGERS (Cronenberg) THE CONVERSATION KHRUSTALYOV, MY CAR! SNOW TRAIL -- Mifune's debut, and memorable mainly for his awesome star power. THRONE OF BLOOD HIDDEN FORTRESS RED BEARD FLEE GO WEST (Keaton) HIGH AND LOW TOUCH ...

I was very taken with BENEDICTION, despite the less than ideal viewing conditions at the festering shithole known as the Angelika Film Center. Jack Lowden is definitely an actor to watch -- he's been very good in the SLOW HORSES series, too. As much as I could endure of that idiotic GLASS ONION thin...

And the Supreme Court is only just beginning. Sodomy laws will be reinstated, contraception banned, and same-sex marriage nullified. The Republican Agenda is energetically put forth while Democrats can barely bother to pretend to be surprised.

I put on THE BATMAN the other night, just to see and out of a certain respect for Robert Pattinson. It was business as usual, urban blight urban ugliness violent thugs in clown makeup blah blah blah, and then Pattinson started narrating, and he said, "they say I live in the shadows...." an...

The slap was real. The Academy doesn't want or plan that kind of ugly controversy, and neither do the two actors involved.