Last Watched

[rischka]

restored al-mummia, thx marty!!

[Joks Trois]

PS: Carpenter also made incredible films between 1975 and 1982 (roughly in the same period as Hill - though I dislike Dark Star and therefore left it out). It's sad to see how both their careers gradually declined though (declined, because they basically started with a string of startling masterpieces and therefore from an incredibly high point). But compared with many other US filmmakers from the 80s and 90s and 2000s, they still made (some) great stuff, of course.

Hill declined earlier than Carp. Carp made some interesting films in the 90's like In The Mouth of Madness etc, and even Escape From LA is good campy fun.

Both would have surely been even more outstanding, and might have had a better career towards their "end", if they had worked in the old studio system: imagine Hill and Carp making films in the 30s, 40s and 50s (and maybe even the 60s)!
It's a bit as with many other directors of roughly that generation (e.g. Coppola, Cimino, Milius, etc.).

Yes. It just becomes more obvious with time that most of the so called 'mavericks' of New Hollywood were quasi, if not outright, traditionalists with a slightly askew view. Cimino is such an odd case though. Not sure how he fell off so dramatically after making The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate, which, to me, despite their flaws, are pretty monumental pieces of contemporary American film making. I'm sure his confidence took a hit after Heaven's Gate bombed and destroyed UA, but Year of The Dragon also had moments of brilliance. After that, his career was a complete wash. I know some people defend The Silician, Desperate Hours etc, but to me those films are very weak and not a patch on what he did in the late 70's/early 80's when he seemed poised to be the next great American director.


Boiling Point (Ktaino): rewatch. Not quite as refined as Sonatine, but his style was fully formed at this point on his second feature. Some startling scenes, including one of the best action scenes of the 90's in a small cramped office, as well as great associational editing and use of dissolve. 7.5/10

[nrh]

Boiling Point (Ktaino): rewatch. Not quite as refined as Sonatine, but his style was fully formed at this point on his second feature. Some startling scenes, including one of the best action scenes of the 90's in a small cramped office, as well as great associational editing and use of dissolve. 7.5/10

if i remember correctly boiling point is the film where kitano said he found himself as a director, because he had to basically create it in the editing. which i think opens up an interesting way to look at him as a director overall.

[ofrene]

Just watched Threads and what a hellish depressing movie it is... most harrowing apocalypse movie ever seen

[rischka]

jodie mack's glitchy textile travelogue totally worth signing up for mubi trial

[Roscoe]

ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD -10,000,000/10. The Curtiz/Keighley classic. Things of beauty are a joy forever. Gorgeousness all over the place. Comic villains who show their true villainous colors, the undiluted fabulousness of Errol Flynn, and Basil Rathbone and Una O'Connor and Claude Rains -- it is beyond me to resist it.

[Holymanm]

10,000,000% agreed! Firmly on my top list.

[MrCarmady]

Foxfire is really pretty and has a great cast (weirdly Hedy Burress never amounted to anything, even though she's fantastic here, but there's also Angelina Jolie! Jenny Lewis! Jenny Shimizu!), and the sexual tension of the early scenes can be cut with a knife (holy shit, the tattoo one especially) but gets progressively dumber as it goes on, with the whole drug subplot the biggest offender. Quite funny that Rosenbaum likes it, he pretty much nails it in his review but clearly wasn't as put off by the third act as I was. Still worthwhile.

[rischka]

watched one for obayashi-san, the intriguingly titled 'his motorbike, her island.' quite a bit of idiosyncratic directorial choice befitting the director of 'hausu.' sort of like an 80s teen movie from another planet.





the color scheme(s) and especially the music really enhanced the aura of dreams/nostalgia. very sweet! wasn't sure quite what to expect as i'm not a hausu fan

[MrCarmady]

Re-watched Shadows in Paradise. What a delight.

[---]

been meaning to rewatch Shadows in Paradise for ages, haven't seen it in about 5 years. One of my all-time favs

[MrCarmady]

been meaning to rewatch Shadows in Paradise for ages, haven't seen it in about 5 years. One of my all-time favs

Same, except more like 8-9 years. It was upgraded and freeleeched on Black Crow, so I took advantage. It holds the fuck up. Need to see more of his other stuff, only seen 6.

[nrh]

wasn't sure quite what to expect as i'm not a hausu fan

i like hausu a lot but it's not at all indicative what the rest of his career looks like. the brilliant play with texture and optical tricks remains of course but tone and pace is so different.

[rischka]

threads -- depressing as hell yes but it almost makes me feel better about our current situation, like this could have happened anytime since i've been alive and by some miracle it hasn't yet. also confirms my impression that i would not want to survive a nuclear attack. happy easter everyone

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Agatha and the Limitless Readings
I'm a huge fan of Duras, the novelist. I somehow had never seen any of work as a director. But this was really wonderful, and captures perfectly the ethereal, logic through abstraction that her novels do so well. There's a bit of Akermen in some of formal choices, and I see the ghost of the opening montage of Hiroshima, Mon Amour sort of floating overhead (much the way the ghost of Marienbad hovers over Robbe-Grillet's L'immortelle) but this is more than anything else the perfect aesthetic encapsulation of her approach to narrative.
Fucking exhilarating really.

[Umbugbene]

Wish I could see that again. I watched India Song seven times in the last month, taking advantage of its rotation on Mubi.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

I found a decent quality version on youtube. I might hit up the Mubi free trial to watch India Song before it goes.

[Umbugbene]

I found that, but whenever a YouTube video falls short of the published running time I'm suspicious that it's not a proper copy. The YouTube video is 82:33 long, but LB and IMDb show 90 minutes. I've missed a lot of movies I want to see because I'm so fussy that way, but if a movie's any good then every minute counts.

[pabs]

A Hard Day (Kim, 2014). For the current year poll.

Far-fetched as all hell, plot-twists every 10 minutes, but loads of juvenile fun.

[nrh]

I found that, but whenever a YouTube video falls short of the published running time I'm suspicious that it's not a proper copy. The YouTube video is 82:33 long, but LB and IMDb show 90 minutes.

the version on kg (converted from pal to ntsc) is about 85 minutes, the original dvd copy is 83

[Umbugbene]

the version on kg (converted from pal to ntsc) is about 85 minutes, the original dvd copy is 83

Okay thanks for that. I'll take it to mean lb/imdb are wrong. Good to know... I'll rewatch it soon!

[greennui]

Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie (Henry King, 1952) - A sprawling obscure gem that kept going into surprising directions. The film's got a conservative appearance yet ended up as a deconstruction of this typical conservative, toxic man, making sure to show consequences of his controlling behaviour and how it left everyone including himself miserable. It's also the first film David Lynch recalls seeing, naturally he found it very disturbing.

[rischka]

yeah i wanna see that especially since loving king's state fair a few years back.

watched a fun soviet silent -- i tend to enjoy circus films so dva-buldi-dva seemed right up my alley. things take a dramatic turn when father & son clowns are caught up in the russian revolution! amazing circus skills are deployed against the decadent 'whites.' from lev kuleshov and nina agadzhanova, screenwriter of pudovkin's dezertir, among others

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1250 ... 66625?s=20

[Roscoe]

Terry Jones' Monty Python's LIFE OF BRIAN, seen for the first time in what must be nearly thirty years. As funny as it all is, and it's very funny, it was the extreme bitterness that announced itself. It's one of the most ruthless dissections of human stupidity out there. Nobody can say the Pythons didn't warn us.

[MrCarmady]

A film so funny it was banned in Norway!

I just watched Blood for Dracula after meaning to for years. It's pretty trashy but not, like, fun trashy. Just vile, rapey, incestuous, and badly acted. I can't say that I hated it because it's engaging in its own weird way, but I don't really see what people see in it that makes them put it on their top of all time lists or whatever, it's basically a satire of nothing.

[nrh]

corman's house of usher - one of the great telling gestures in this one is that poe's roderick usher plays guitar and gets to intone beautiful sonorous poem, while price's bleach blonde weirdo discordantly plucks at his lute with eyes closed, totally removed from the disinterest of those around him.



seeing this i wish i had done the poe cycle in order - the ideas here are clearly embellished on by corman, matheson & company in the later films. and despite the amazing minature(?) or matte(?) exterior of the house i kind of think the interior production design kills this just a little bit - it honestly seems like a pretty bright and cosey house, but maybe that's just because i've barely left my apartment in a month or more.

But this really is the price show - he just dominates the tone and the pace of the film, this weird doomed faded aristocrat ranting about ancestral sin and inevitable death. funny that mrcarmady mentioned the great blood for dracula in his last post because i do think there is some similarity here between udo kier in that film and price in this one...

[MrCarmady]

I'm not gonna deny that Kier has a massive presence, he always does. But the dynamic between him and his servant is a one-note joke, as is the dynamic between him and the daughters and the daughters and Joe Dallesandro. The film feels bloated even though it's only 100 minutes long. It's certainly visually effective, though.

[rischka]

watching band baaja baaraat again

[nrh]

i can see someone missing some of price's aristocratic camp in usher, but for me at least this feels like a much more richly imagined revisit of that film's ideas; from the opening minutes, that montage of waves crashing against the rocks, this is just much more formally accomplished too (although surely budget had something to do with that).



matheson's script takes a wonderfully convoluted route to get us to the last 20 minutes where a now fully deranged price snaps in the basement torture chamber, winding through generations of violence and trauma and my personal favorite use of corman's beloved hallucinatory sequences, here flashbacks to young price seeing his father kill his mother.

one weird thing i remember as i kid is trying to watch some of these when they came on tv (i loved the poe stories and price) and having a really hard time with them - i just couldn't grasp the thread of the story, couldn't see how the recognizable gothic/horror atmosphere and these plots converged. watching as an adult it's interesting to see how odd and even abstract the films really are - these peculiar chamber dramas centered around price's collection of strange, tormented, slightly camp madmen...

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Watched Duras' "Destroy, She Said". Probably my favorite novel of hers. A really strong adaptation. Duras remains relatively traditional in her formal choices here, but we get hints of her more radical concepts integrated in a much more subtle way than the other two of her films I've watched and it's great.

We get some early hints at her mastery of disorienting staging via mirrors. Allowing for multiple, traditionally impossible 2 shots.


Also, this might be the perfect Quarantine movie.