What I Watched This Month......

[kanafani]

Delightful Rewatches
Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas, 1996)♥♥
All the Vermeers in New York (Jon Jost, 1990)♥
Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)♥♥
U.S. Go Home (Claire Denis, 1994)♥
Ménilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1926)♥♥

Favorite New Watches
Carnival in Flanders (Jacques Feyder, 1935)♥♥
The Cordillera of Dreams (Patricio Guzmán, 2019)♥
Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito, 2020)♥
Underground (Anthony Asquith, 1928)♥
I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts (Harun Farocki, 2004)♥
The Interview (Harun Farocki, 1997)♥

Enjoyed
Greenland (Ric Roman Waugh, 2020)
Three Comrades (Frank Borzage, 1938)
Official Secrets (Gavin Hood, 2019)
One Week (Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline, 1920)
In a World... (Lake Bell, 2013)
Such a Pretty Little Beach (Yves Allégret, 1949)
The Outpost (Rod Lurie, 2019)
The Pearl Button (Patricio Guzmán, 2015)
The Tale of the Fox (Wladyslaw Starewicz, Irene Starewicz, 1937)
The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, 2018)

Meh
The Hunt (Craig Zobel, 2020)
Nothing But Time (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1926)
Speaking Directly (Jon Jost, 1973)
Unhinged (Derrick Borte, 2020)
7500 (Patrick Vollrath, 2019)
Lost Bullet (Guillaume Pierret, 2020)

No Thanks
Secret Society of Second Born Royals (Anna Mastro, 2020)
Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018)
Throne of Elves (Yuefeng Song, Yi Ge, 2016)

[MrCarmady]

I watched Vermeers this month as well after hearing great things about it for years and was underwhelmed. What is it that works for you about it apart from the visuals?

[nrh]

there were two main themes to my viewing this month:

films by directors i'd never seen before (but wanted to) :

Zombie 3 (Lucio Fulci, 1988) - 3/10

fwiw fulci pretty much disowned this film. both the producers and fulci and the replacement director bruno mattei had different takes on who was responsible but basically nobody wants to claim the film as their own.

[kanafani]

I watched Vermeers this month as well after hearing great things about it for years and was underwhelmed. What is it that works for you about it apart from the visuals?

There is a mix of eeriness and familiarity in this movie that I found very engaging. It's moored in conventional fare (the romantic adventures of attractive people in New York City) and touches on somewhat familiar themes (the intersection of art and money, how capitalism infiltrates our most intimate relationships, the ghoulish, dehumanizing ways of Wall Street, etc), but at the same time it works the material in such a strange, almost surreal fashion. An experimental romantic comedy of sorts, where mood and feel have the upper hand on characters and drama. In its unique way, it really brings a certain place and time to life. It looks and sounds absolutely gorgeous. I think I initially saw it on a much crappier print. The print I saw this time was glorious. This was the first of many Jost movies I've watched. I think it is one of his very best.

[flip]

fwiw fulci pretty much disowned this film. both the producers and fulci and the replacement director bruno mattei had different takes on who was responsible but basically nobody wants to claim the film as their own.

yeah, i read about that after i saw the film, for a few of those first-seen directors, i didn't watch something that seems remotely representative of what the director might have done well in other work (lucio fulci, jean rouch, john abraham, etc), so i'll see more before i form any real impressions

[nrh]

for john abraham they have some nice restorations of his most famous films on the potato eaters youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Lv6c ... KvuGfpL9Ng

[MrCarmady]

I watched Vermeers this month as well after hearing great things about it for years and was underwhelmed. What is it that works for you about it apart from the visuals?

There is a mix of eeriness and familiarity in this movie that I found very engaging. It's moored in conventional fare (the romantic adventures of attractive people in New York City) and touches on somewhat familiar themes (the intersection of art and money, how capitalism infiltrates our most intimate relationships, the ghoulish, dehumanizing ways of Wall Street, etc), but at the same time it works the material in such a strange, almost surreal fashion. An experimental romantic comedy of sorts, where mood and feel have the upper hand on characters and drama. In its unique way, it really brings a certain place and time to life. It looks and sounds absolutely gorgeous. I think I initially saw it on a much crappier print. The print I saw this time was glorious. This was the first of many Jost movies I've watched. I think it is one of his very best.

Yeah, it does have a pretty unique feel to it and I agree it looks great but I found its treatment of the themes you mentioned fairly facile. Loved the roommate squabbles, though. I'm gonna check out Last Chants for a Slow Dance and The Bed You Sleep In and see if it clicks, sometimes it's hard for me to get onboard with a director's style on the first try.

[greennui]

That's a neat little write-up, K. One thing I like about Jost's style is the way the camera just wanders off at times. If a Jost film can get a restoration and this much exposure then I guess there's hope for many others!

[nrh]

shall we kiss?, emmanuel mouret
virumaandi, kamal haasan
please, please me, emmanuel mouret
der fahnder: nactwache, dominik graf
kadak, rajat kapoor
doctor sleep (director's cut), mike flanagan
the tragedy of w, shinichiro sawai
der bomber pilot, werner schroeter
the detective and death, gonzalo suarez
fine, with occasional murders, kazuyuki izutsu
l'art d'aimer, emmanuel mouret
silent trigger, russel mulcahy
cabaret, haruki kadokawa
prathi poovankozhi, rosshan andrews
adaminte makan abu, salim ahamed
opehlia, claude chabrol
pulan visaarani, rk selvamani
raigyo, takahisa zeze
kokkuri, takahisa zeze
master, lokesh kanagaraj
the dream of garuda, takahisa zeze
ludo, anurag basu

pleasantly surprised by the new basu, somewhat disappointed by the lokesh kanagaraj. highlights were the zezes, the '80s kadokawa movies and all the mourets.

detective and death may be one of the very worst movies i've seen by a director i've otherwise liked.

[kanafani]

all the mourets.

All the mourets, all the way! He was my favorite new discovery last year. I watched 12 of his movies in 2020. No one seems to like his latest, but I guess I’ll have to watch it soon anyway.

[flip]

for john abraham

that looks awesome, thanks! i'll check them out some time for sure

[thoxans]

it's always fair weather (stanley donen / gene kelly)
fear city (abel ferrara)
the host (bong joon-ho)
haywire (steven soderbergh)
night of the demons (kevin s. tenney)
the house is black (forough farrokhzad)
vibes (kwn kwapis)
cherry 2000 (steve de jarnatt)
aakhri adaalat (rajiv mehra)
alien from la (albert pyun)

[---]

wonderful new discovery
rewatch
at the cinema
"short film"

0121 (V, iii)

18 Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy (Stanley Nelson, 2021) -- 2.5/4
17 ‎10 Things I Hate About You (Gil Junger, 1999) -- 3.5/4
10 Talking to Strangers (Rob Tregenza, 1988) -- 4/4
08 Kaliya Mardan (Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, 1919) -- 2.5/4
08 "Birth of Shri Krishna" (Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, 1918) -- 2/4
08 "Lanka Dahan" (Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, 1917) -- 2/4
08 "Panorama of Calcutta" (John Benett-Stanford, 1899) -- 2.5/4
01 Wedding Ring (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1950) -- 3/4

[Joks Trois]

body swap/body switch movies:

Heaven Can Wait (Warren Beatty, 1978) - 7/10
Every Day (Michael Sucsy, 2018) - 6/10
A Saintly Switch (Peter Bogdanovich, 1999) - 5/10
Switch (Blake Edwards, 1991) - 5/10
Seventeen Again (Jeffrey Byrd, 2000) - 5/10
Soul (Pete Docter, 2020) - 5/10
Wish Upon a Star (Blair Treu, 1996) - 2/10
18 Again! (Paul Flaherty, 1988) - 2/10
Just Follow Law (Jack Neo, 2007) - 1/10
Dating the Enemy (Megan Simpson Huberman, 1996) - 1/10

I admire your commitment to watching films of this nonsense 'genre'. Kudos! You missed Dream a Little Dream though!

[flip]

I admire your commitment to watching films of this nonsense 'genre'. Kudos! You missed Dream a Little Dream though!

it's always nice to be admired for something, so thank you! i did have a few reasons to watch the films, and some questions, among them:

- what is the least rewarding film genre to explore? i was wondering, is it body swap? obviously there's lots of bad, say, xmas movies, but there are quite a few good ones too. i was wondering if there were any good body swap movies. and there are! but they are rare (unless you take an expansive view of what qualifies). anyway curious for suggestions of mainstream genres that might have an even shorter supply of good films. monkeys playing basketball films? is that a genre?

- bodyswap does seem the genre most suited to exploring issues around identity, and i wasn't surprised to find very recent body swap movies that are totally different, ideologically, from the 1980s-1990s ones. there are a few straight couple man/woman body swap films, and the 1980s-1990s ones were very binary, using the premise to reinforce the differences (in the universe of the film) between men and women (e.g. in dating the enemy (1996)), and i don't know how retrograde those films seemed at the time, but they seem prehistoric now, that kind of "men like football! women like shoes!" kind of hilarity that never gets old. gender becomes a lot more fluid in more recent films, so e.g. one habitual bodyswapper in every day (2018) is explicitly non-binary. identity isn't something i give much thought to generally but it was at least interesting to watch some of those films through that lens.

dream a little dream looks awesome so i'll see if i can find a copy

[rischka]

dream a little dream looks awesome so i'll see if i can find a copy

wow BOTH coreys how can you go wrong

[Holdrüholoheuho]

bodyswap

bodyswap as a result of a brain transplant...
YOU ARE A WIDOW, SIR! (Václav Vorlíček, 1971)
https://letterboxd.com/film/you-are-a-widow-sir/
DOUBLE ROLE (Jaromil Jireš, 1999)
https://letterboxd.com/film/dvojrole/

THE CAPRICES OF LOVE (Josef Kábrt, 1969) ... in Czech, no subs (love triangle, hubby and paramour swaping heads)
https://youtu.be/IE6NTVkZw_8

SWITCHIN' KITTEN (Gene Deitch, 1961)
https://vimeo.com/327578227

[flip]

i was actually thinking about running a body swap genre poll (though i was imagining using a totally new set of rules that wouldn't involve ballots so it would be easy to participate), and now since you've suggested a few outré titles, i'm even more strongly thinking about it!

[pabs]

pabs watched a film IN A CINEMA

I know, we were really, really lucky in my state, the last 6 months everything was pretty much back to normal with cinemas, restaurants, bars, everything open again, zero local cases, but that all changed two days ago. Since last Sunday, we're back to strict lockdown again with everyone confined to their house because a security guard working in a hotel caught it off a quarantined newly-arrived covid-positive overseas traveller, and then he went home, went shopping etc... and he had three housemates. We're waiting to see if they've tested positive, too.

From nearly 100% freedom (we still had social distancing, though) to complete lockdown in the space of an hour after the government announced it. Wearing masks outside the home is now mandatory for the first time ever.

[nrh]

i was wondering if there were any good body swap movies. and there are!

just watched an odd body swap variant tonight, takahisa zeze's dog star which is...kind of star man but with a dog? like the dog is a seeing eye dog whose master is killed in a car accident, and since the dead master was not a great dude in life he needs to do some good deeds to get into heaven, and grants the dog a wish to become a human so he can find the young woman who trained him for the first 10 months of his life before becoming a professional seeing eye dog. so he gets the only body available, a police officer whose just committed suicide...

[Holymanm]

any good body swap movies

Your Name (Makoto Shinkai, 2016)
Exchange Students (Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1982)
haven't seen Switching - Goodbye Me (Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 2007) yet - remake of the above ^ supposed to be better...
and of course Face/Off (John Woo, 1997)

[kanafani]

Freaky Friday
Big (??)

[MrCarmady]

the zac efron 17 again is pretty fun

[pabs]

.

[Joks Trois]

* = rewatches.

A fairly light viewing month for me.

Liberte* (Serra) - 7.5
Juliet of The Spirits* (Fellini) - 7
Aferim! (Jude) - 7
Fast-Walking (Harris) - 5
Godzilla: King of Monsters (who cares) - 4
Knightriders (Romero) - 5.5
What She Said: the Art of Pauline Kael (no idea) - 5
West of Zanzibar (Browning) - 7
The 13th Chair (Browning) - 4.5
The Nun (Rivette) - 7.5
Universal Horror (Brownlow) - 5.5
He Who Gets Slapped (Sjöström) - 6.5
Hollywood or Bust (Tashlin) - 5.5
Toby Dammit (Fellini) - 6

[rischka]

fort apache (ford 1948) ♥
the fall (whitehead 1968)
rab ne bana di jodi (chopra 2008) ♥
if i were for real (wang 1981)
birds (or how to be one) (makridis 2020)
the last days of pompeii (caserini 1913)
framing britney spears (stark 2021)
a place called chiapas (wild 1998)
chain (jem cohen 2004) ♥
100 horsemen (cottafavi 1964)
traffic in souls (tucker 1913)
germinal (capellani 1913) ♥♥
l'enfant de paris (perret 1913)
silent souls (fedorchenko 2010)
judas and the black messiah (king 2021)
le clair de terre (gilles 1970)

rewatches

dao/the blade (tsui hark 1995) ♥
dishonored (josef von sternberg 1931) ♥♥
brief encounter (david lean 1945) ♥♥

various shorts and also fantômas ♥

i'm watching earth light again; it was so dreamy i kept nodding off lol

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1365 ... 68229?s=20

[DT.]

- February -

In & of Itself (Frank Oz, 2021)
Chicken and Duck Talk (Clifton Ko, 1988)
The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli, 1948)
The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)
Antiporno (Sion Sono, 2016)
Confidence (István Szabó, 1980)
Boiling Point (Takeshi Kitano, 1990)
Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai, 2011)
Centre Stage (Stanley Kwan, 1991)
À Nous la Liberté (René Clair, 1931)
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 2005)
Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935)

[ofrene]

2021. 2

The Pink Cloud (Iuli Gerbase, 2021)
Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir, 2021)
Prisoners of the Ghostland (Sono Sion, 2021)
Pleasure (Ninja Thyberg, 2021)
All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony, 2021)
Space Sweepers (Jo Sung-hee, 2021)
Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson, 2021)
Three Sisters (Lee Seung-won, 2020)
Dispatch; I Don’t Fire Myself (Lee Tae-gyeom, 2020)
Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1950)
Kuessipan (Myriam Verreault, 2019)
Adolescents (Sebastien Lifshitz, 2019)
Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, 1997) *rewatch ♥
Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994) *rewatch ♥
Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-wai, 1995)
Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai, 1990) *rewatch ♥
Ingeborg Holm (Victor Sjostrom, 1913)
A Man There Was (Victor Sjostrom, 1917)
Eternal Love (Ernst Lubitsch, 1929)
The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch, 1929)
Underground (Anthony Asquith, 1928) ♥
A Cottage on Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith, 1929) ♥
Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929) ♥
The Two of Us (Claude Berri, 1967)
Black Light (Bae Jong-dae, 2020)
Those Who Remained (Barnabas Toth, 2019)
The Father (Florian Zeller, 2020)
Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)
Chain (Jem Cohen, 2004)
Lingua Franca (Isabel Sandoval, 2019)
God's Own Country (Francis Lee, 2017)
Beast (Michael Pearce, 2017)
Aniara (Pella Kagerman, Hugo Lilja, 2018)
The Child of Paris (Leonce Perret, 1913)
Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (Yevgeni Bauer, 1913)
After Death (Yevgeni Bauer, 1915)
The Dying Swan (Yevgeni Bauer, 1917) ♥
2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004) *rewatch
The Hand (Wong Kar-wai, 2004)
Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller, 2019)
LA 92 (T.J. Martin, Daniel Lindsay, 2017)

[Roscoe]

GODFATHER CODA: THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CORLEONE -- 7
HALLOWEEN (Carpenter) 7
MACBETH (Welles) 7
THE KISS BEFORE THE MIRROR (Whale) 3/10
BLESSED EVENT (Del Ruth) 8/10
LA ROUE (Gance) 8/10
TOO MANY KISSES 5/10
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT 10,000,000/10

A rather light month.

[Silga]

February 2021

Rewatch

Le Magnifique (Philippe de Broca, 1973) 5/10
Seizure (Oliver Stone, 1974) 2/10
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) 9/10
The Fortune (Mike Nichols, 1975) 4/10
Midway (Jack Smight, 1976) 5/10
Starting Over (Alan J. Pakula, 1979) 9/10
The Taming of the Scoundrel (Franco Castellano, Giuseppe Moccia, 1980) 6/10
La Chèvre (Francis Veber, 1981) 7/10
The Professional (Georges Lautner, 1981) 7/10
See You in the Morning (Alan J. Pakula, 1989) 7/10
Alice (Woody Allen, 1990) 6/10
Howards End (James Ivory, 1992) 9/10
Under Siege (Andrew Davis, 1992) 6/10
Heaven & Earth (Oliver Stone, 1993) 8/10
Mad Dog and Glory (John McNaughton, 1993) 4/10
Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994) 8/10
On Deadly Ground (Steven Seagal, 1994) 4/10
Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins, 1995) 7/10
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (Geoff Murphy, 1995) 3/10
The Birdcage (Mike Nichols, 1996) 6/10
Executive Decision (Stuart Baird, 1996) 5/10
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach, 1997) 5/10
Sphere (Barry Levinson, 1998) 6/10
East/West (Régis Wargnier, 1999) 7/10
Anna and the King (Andy Tennant, 1999) 5/10
W. (Oliver Stone, 2008) 6/10
Cedar Rapids (Miguel Arteta, 2011) 8/10
Get On Up (Tate Taylor, 2014) 5/10
Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015) 9/10
Ronaldo (Anthony Wonke, 2015) 5/10
The Bronze (Bryan Buckley, 2015) 6/10
By Sidney Lumet (Nancy Buirski, 2015) 8/10
Queen of the Desert (Werner Herzog, 2015) 6/10
Criminal Activities (Jackie Earle Haley, 2015) 4/10
Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief (Alex Gibney, 2015) 7/10
Race (Stephen Hopkins, 2016) 4/10
Packing for Mars (Thierry Robert, 2018) 6/10
Blackbird (Roger Michell, 2019) 5/10
Cordelia (Adrian Shergold, 2019) 6/10
Waiting for the Barbarians (Ciro Guerra, 2019) 6/10
Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard, 2020) 5/10
The Call of the Wild (Chris Sanders, 2020) 6/10

TV:
Chernobyl (Johan Renck, 2019) 8/10

Shorts:
Ellis (JR, 2015) 7/10
Brothers (Robert Eggers, 2015) 5/10
Quay (Christopher Nolan, 2015) 6/10
Vale (Alejandro Amenábar, 2015) 4/10
Kung Fury (David Sandberg, 2015) 3/10
Conventional (Karen Gillan, 2015) 5/10
The Audition (Martin Scorsese, 2015) 4/10
Once and Forever (Karl Lagerfeld, 2015) 5/10
World of Tomorrow (Don Hertzfeldt, 2015) 7/10
Borrowed Time (Andrew Coats, Lou Hamou-Lhadj, 2015) 6/10

Best: Howards End, Starting Over, Jaws
Worst: Seizure, Kung Fury, Under Siege 2