Last Watched

[Roscoe]

Seen at the annual Day Of Silents by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, on the fabulous Big Fucking Screen at the Castro:

THE MARRIAGE CIRCLE, Lubitsch's comedy of manipulation and one-upmanship, hailed by Hitchcock and Truffaut and others as being "pure cinema" for its non-reliance on title cards and skilled visual storytelling, and all that. And there's plenty to admire in that department, lingering closeups of actors raising eyebrows and looking slowly from right to left and just generally letting their faces to the talking. The only thing missing, I'm afraid, is any reason to give a damn about what's going on. The story of a bored wife who decides to take her frustration with her husband out on him by pursuing the new husband of her best friend, and well, that conniving destructive little bitch only becomes human in one odd little moment where she kind of crumples in despair in front of her husband, her loneliness and unhappiness apparent enough for even him to take note, but I'm afraid it's just too little too late. Whatever, Ernst. I'll always have THE DOLL.

[sally]

Seen at the annual Day Of Silents by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, on the fabulous Big Fucking Screen at the Castro:

soooooooooooo jealous!

[sally]

okay, sorry if i keep going wow lately, but i must have watched a lot of the wrong films for the right ones to come along and stun me. i have never seen a silent film like this...

technically it's a snow movie



but it's also a gestures of despair movie



but it's also a give the space for the actors to act so naturally that i feel sick movie, to really see the point at which the creepy man to decides to be creepy, to really see her shiver from his touch movie, a shot by the astonishing karl freund movie, an i need to now see way more paul czinner movie...



fräulein else (1929) ♥♥♥

[nrh]

fräulein else (1929) ♥♥♥

just bought this book yesterday!

[Roscoe]

REDSKIN -- a 1929 film about Native American issues, filmed in lovely two-strip Technicolor in some gorgeous locations (marvelous on the Castro Theater's B.F. Screen), with a script that raises ugly issues about white people's treatment of Native Americans and doesn't quite cop out as entirely as one might expect. Much of the film is in color, with an extended trip to an oppressive Boarding School where native children are taught to be good citizens (including whippings for not saluting the American flag) being the only section in black and white. Straight up racism is depicted in ugly ways, and it's interesting that our Native American hero gets it from both sides -- he's too Indian for whites to accept him, and he's too white for the Native Americans to accept him. Well worth a serious look if you get a chance.

And yes, the leads are played by white actors, and that's African American Noble Johnson playing the Pueblo leader.

[Lencho of the Apes]

too Indian ... and ... too white

Frances Ford/Thomas Ince used this trope in their excellent 1913 almost-feature The Lieutenant's Last Fight. With a Native actor, iirc.

[Joks Trois]

Psycho (1998): Cinema as pod people! 4/10

Ad Astra: a simple story blown up to epic proportions. Gray does not convincingly pull off his Malick-esque story of personal crisis and cosmology on a narrative level, but it's quite effective as a reflective mood piece when it isn't being sidetracked by action set pieces and overly literal voiceover.

SPOILER: Part of the reason it doesn't really work as well as it should in the final act is that it isn't really about exploring the universe and finding it wanting at all. It is about a father who left his family to focus on work and his son suffers from the same problem, albeit in a less extreme way. To me this neuters the full potential of that message. It could have just as easily been set in an office. 6.5/10. Maybe a 7.

Rambo Last Blood: DTV action with a budget. Sly is fine, but these kind of simplistic revenge stories are old hat now, even tonedeaf. Passes the time, especially for fans of the aging star. 4.5 or 5.

[pabs]

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (Sciamma, 2019). The cinematography was splendid and the actors, wonderful. Not much happens over these 117 minutes, but they fly by thanks to two, perfect performances that mesmerised, and those constantly gorgeous visuals.

8.5/10

Saw it in a cinema.

[rischka]

saw just one formerly unseen film on tcm while confined in hospital -- in the good old summertime.

seemed unseasonable til i discovered this is a remake of shop around the corner. co-stars include an old and underused buster keaton which made me sad

oh i forgot - also bowery boys, loose in london which was good for a laugh and some jungle princess movie i can't recall the name as i was heavily sedated

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

i will never get over the fact that there is a Christmas movie wholly set at winter called In the Good Old Summertime. it loses, like, four out of five stars in my book just for having such a woefully unfitting title. if memory serves, i fancy Van Johnson in that, however, though of course he's no Jimmy.

[rischka]

i will never get over the fact that there is a Christmas movie wholly set at winter called In the Good Old Summertime. it loses, like, four out of five stars in my book just for having such a woefully unfitting title. if memory serves, i fancy Van Johnson in that, however, though of course he's no Jimmy.

yeah he was a hottie!

[rischka]

uncut gems was amazing

[Roscoe]

CASINO, in a nice 35mm print at the Museum of the Moving Image, a film I've never entirely warmed up to, despite its occasional flashes of brilliance. An out of control movie about out of control people, and I'm afraid by film's end I'm not giving a damn what happens to them.

[thoxans]

In the Good Old Summertime

wait. that's an xmas movie!? i was wondering why tcm was showing it slap dab in the middle of an xmas flick bloc. wtf...

[Roscoe]

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD -- 2 hours and 25 minutes of vapid crap followed by graphic masturbatory violence because that's what Tarantino does, and to hell with it.

0/10. Zero out of ten. ZERO.

[nrh]

the traitor, marco bellocchio - the comparison is kind of meaningless but it's amazing that we get 2 old master directed mafia epics this year. sort of an amazing movie, two decades in the collapse of the italian mafia at the hands of an anti-heroic narcissist turned informer.

extraordinary scope and procedural detail, but it's bellocchio so the whole thing is shot through with a dreamlike, morbid intensity, where the interrogating judge becomes as much confessor and psychotherapist as anything else. a total mise en scene triumph and an editing one as well. everyone has written about the trial sequences, and rightly so, but it's the third act detour in american witness protection program exile, old age, and what is either defeat or pyrric victory at best that pushes this into classic territory for me (and most invites comparison to irishman).

actually caught up with once upon a time... last weekend, and after thinking django was a total disaster i was surprised to find that i really liked it. have read so much about the film but i still found it strange and surprising. kind of like korine's beach bum i keep reading that it's this warm hangout movie but i found it to be this outpouring of regret and self-loathing. how anyone can read the final explosion of violence as anything other than explicitly horrific and critical of the two main characters is beyond me, but then that doesn't seem to be the majority reading of the film so who knows?

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

the traitor, marco bellocchio - the comparison is kind of meaningless but it's amazing that we get 2 old master directed mafia epics this year. sort of an amazing movie, two decades in the collapse of the italian mafia at the hands of an anti-heroic narcissist turned informer.

I'd never heard of this, thanks for the tip! Sounds very interesting. Always glad to hear of something notable happening in the world of Italian filmmaking.

[Roscoe]

JABBERWOCKY, Gilliam's first solo outing, and a right old mess, and there are some glimmers of glories to come, but well, it's only my devotion to Gilliam the Great And Terrible that kept me watching to the end. As a picture of medieval squalor, it is equalled only by German's HARD TO BE A GOD.

[Joks Trois]

^^HTBAG is better than anything Gilliam ever made imo.

Don't Torture a Duckling: Arrow blu. Excellent transfer. It is amazing how well Fulci's films have translated to HD. What I previously dismissed as hack work seems to come alive in this format. This is one of his more straight forward films with moderately intelligent plotting and a social statement of sorts about the dangers of hypocrisy and parochialism. It also attacks male authority/power pretty hard, which makes accusations of misogyny misguided in this particular instance, although not necessarily across his filmography as a whole.

Some unfortunate dubbing is distracting at times, but the overwhelming sense of stench and decay, of a society rotting from the inside out, is palpably conveyed. 6.5 to 7/10.

[thoxans]

^^

do you have a boxd, joks?

[Joks Trois]

??

[thoxans]

[Joks Trois]

^^Ah, that. Yes I do, but I rarely use it. Why?

[thoxans]

just for good ol fashioned stalking purposes

[Joks Trois]

Hah. My username is the same as here.

Rewatching Planet of The Apes (2001). Oh boy!

[Roscoe]

^^HTBAG is better than anything Gilliam ever made imo.

Well, apples and oranges and all. I was thinking more of the sheer ghastly shit-smeared foul world presented onscreen, which is matched and probably only surpassed by HTBAG. JABBERWOCKY's a pretty bad film, overall, despite the glimmers.

[rischka]

a vingança de uma mulher - rita azevedo gomes (2012) amazing



i knew it would be good when there was a cat in the very first scene

[nrh]

a vingança de uma mulher - rita azevedo gomes (2012) amazing

fragil como o mundo was one of the most extraordinary things I’ve seen this year, can’t wait to watch this and correspondences

[Joks Trois]

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD -- 2 hours and 25 minutes of vapid crap followed by graphic masturbatory violence because that's what Tarantino does, and to hell with it.

0/10. Zero out of ten. ZERO.

Just finished it. Wouldn't give it zero, but it's quite possibly the most pointless film he has ever made. A tribute to a bygone era that has nothing of insight, value or substance to say about it, and the writing is very slack.

I really liked The Hateful Eight and thought it was his best since the 90's, but this feels like a huge step backwards. The actors are fine and it never bored me. Just left me with a very 'meh' feeling, especially considering its length.

5.5/10.

[Roscoe]

Just finished it. Wouldn't give it zero, but it's quite possibly the most pointless film he has ever made. A tribute to a bygone era that has nothing of insight, value or substance to say about it, and the writing is very slack.

Pointless indeed. It seems typical of Tarantino that Sharon Tate's big scene shows her in a movie theater enjoying herself onscreen. Tarantino gifts Tate with his own narcissism.