Last Watched

[Monsieur Arkadin]

In Toronto for the final weekend of TIFF. Started last night with a midnight screening of Working Class Goes to Hell. Apparently the first ever Balkan film to screen in the program. A dubious honor because I felt like the film was stunted by the programming. The Midnight Madness crowd desperately wanted this to be something other than what it is. It’s much more akin to Cristian Mungiu than to Ti West. Not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but an intriguing mix of social realism and euro-provocation. Didn’t merit the number of walkouts I counted… but I think it would have fared better being programmed as a more traditional festival film rather than as exploitation.

[Pretentious Hipster]

Purgatory is a straight to tv western that gave away its twist in an unfortunate way, but in terms of being fun it's definitely successful in doing that. It feels a lot like a very cheesy episode of Twilight Zone. I'd definitely recommend it to fans of weird westerns.

[Roscoe]

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 gasps at key moments, including, alas, a series of "awwwww"s at every appearance of that puppy.

[greennui]

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation wasn't too bad nonsensical action, the hotness of Rebecca Ferguson certainly helped as well.

[rischka]

everything everywhere all at once now with spider-mans!! these are better than the live action spider-mans but how many do we need



this one does have spider-cat so i crown it the best one (aside from being too long and shameless cliffhanger) and i'm done



also a bunch of 30s stuff mostly forgettable aside from a rewatch of 'love me tonight' ♥

[Roscoe]

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 are still nerve-wracking. I like the way Friedkin handles the finale, the only way in which his film improves on the Clouzot original.

[rischka]

i'm in the middle of Obayashi's four sisters and it's great and i should thank twitter for helping me to see that there's much more to obayashi than just hausu



thx fivepoisonskid wherever you are ♥

[rischka]

in 1986 rogerio sganzerla made a mockumentary about orson welles in brazil called Nem Tudo É Verdade (it's not all true)



i'm sure i don't get at least half the references but it's very funny anyway



welles was more interested in filming the favelas than beautiful beaches, leading to complaints from locals



the story of samba had replaced his planned jazz project with duke ellington



drinking and womanizing are featured along with his philosophy of cinema. he seems to have had a grand time until



interviews with people who were involved in the film finds them very disappointed it was never released (at the time it was believed to have been completely destroyed) all this was a pet project of nelson rockefeller funded by american taxpayers on behalf of the war effort. a bitter satire for brazilians who were trying to stay out of it

[Roscoe]

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 NYC films like DOG DAY AFTERNOON. Treat Williams, bless him and RIP, never for a moment convinces as a New Yorker of Italian descent, but he manages to supply some fine moment as the film progresses and events start to take their toll on him.

[rischka]

I watched interstellar and I have to admit it was pretty good! the characters seemed almost human! I laughed when

Spoiler!

matt damon tried to kill matthew McConaughey

and came close to tearing up at least once. practically a Spielberg movie
sure the ending was easily foreseen but the effects were pretty intense and I wish I'd seen it on a bigger screen

I started to watch sicario but turned it off. since I can't access my pc rn I'm using Amazon prime (until I cancel it again ) maybe I'll give it another chance this afternoon

[nrh]

I started to watch sicario but turned it off. since I can't access my pc rn I'm using Amazon prime (until I cancel it again ) maybe I'll give it another chance this afternoon

an evil movie, which is fine (there are a lot of great evil movies), but also impossibly boring.

if you're making best use of prime while it lasts there's always rocky aur rani...

[rischka]

thank you! there's tons of stuff to wade through there and I expect 95% of it s bad so I appreciate the rec

edit: 5 mins in, already love

[rischka]

OK ranveer singh is the new srk


Alexa snooj!

[rischka]

finally watched the deep blue sea -- like what if brief encounter continued for months

this woman needs therapy

[Silga]

finally watched the deep blue sea -- like what if brief encounter continued for months

this woman needs therapy

I can see the resemblance between the two films.

I've only watched Brief Encounter three years ago. Might still be my favorite romance in movies.

The Deep Blue Sea is great too.

Terence Davies will be missed..

[Roscoe]

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

[rischka]

the constant scowl?? at least he finally looks like a grownup

pretty good film, kinda long. i saw a matineee. 2 other people there - an old apache couple. i did not ask them what they thought of it

it was difficult to watch. de niro was great tho ♥

not as good as the irishman or the wolf of wall street but pretty good for 80 i saw marty's making tiktoks now. i hope he lives forever

[rischka]

i also watched mission impossible something pt 1 - glad they're upfront about it. best part is the classic theme music ofc but that train sequence kinda rocks. how much longer can 61 yr old ethan hunt continue to run like that. not sure i'll watch 3 more hrs of it but we'll see. john wick still rules

[Roscoe]

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

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Not actually the last thing I saw, but the last thing I saw before a very chaotic week that prevented me from talking to people about it.

I saw When Dragons Collide, aka Twin Dragons, aka The Rendezvous of Warriors, originally called Tu Du ke (1973).

One of the perks to the part of NY I live in now is the access to the George Eastman Museum's archives. So when they program a small genre festival in our town, the Eastman will chip in some old 35mm print of something rarely screened, and it's always charming if not always good.
This was kung-fu featuring Sammo Hung in a bit part. Heavily inspired by the blaxploitation films of the era. Weird Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd covers thrown in over some of the fight scenes. Our print was dubbed with one of the worst dubbing jobs I've ever seen committed to film. Apparently barely seen by anyone. It had something like 11 logs on letterboxed before this screening.

Not a great film by any standards, but definitely fun, and actually more interesting than the ironic laughter of the audience let on. The incompetence of the dubbing allowed people to assume the filmmaking overall was incompetent, but it was actually just garish. I had a fun time with it.

[Pretentious Hipster]

Hard to Die AKA Sorority House Massacre 3 would either be the best or the most frustrating experience depending on your style of humour. It beats jokes to death to such an extreme degree... literally over a third of the film is dedicated to doing that for one joke. It's also so male gaze-y that it somehow stops being one in the process and becomes more a bimbo type of film. I think it's the fact that it's just so shameless about it, and unsubtle. You know, like "oh no all of our clothes are ruined... guess we gotta all shower... individually... so 5 scenes worth... and then wear lingerie for the rest of the film.

This HAD to have been a parody.

[rischka]

story of GI Joe (wellman 1945) is terrific

[Lencho of the Apes]

That dog is intensely. focussed.

[rischka]

he doesn't like nazis

[rischka]

i enjoyed MAD FATE (2023) we need more feng shui detectives. brings me right back to my first johnnie to - MAD DETECTIVE (2007) so milky way

kind of a lot of (CGI) cat violence tho... i'm curious to see LIMBO now. i'll add this to my 2023 best list

and i'm gonna watch mad detective again maybe blind detective too

[rischka]

mad detective last seen 15 yrs ago still great mad fate is a lot more abstract, this is practically conventional narrative in comparison except the lady from shanghai ending



i fear limbo may have too much sexual assault for me so i'ma skip it for now. but i think i have another johnnie to + wai ka fai somewhere

[rischka]

it was turn left, turn right (2003) with takeshi kaneshiro playing violin and shouting poetry from rooftops, very charming

[nrh]

should rewatch turn left, turn right, since it was the only to/wai that i really hated the first time i saw it.

watched may december, which i guess was the big social media movie of the last weekend. for all that this is haynes going back to something spikier and a little more confrontational (emphasis on "a little," this is hardly his '90s work), it's also his most "pop" movie. fast paced, lots of catty one liners and big gestures, can't help but think of that netflix catch them in the first minute dictate when you see that "hot dogs" line that everybody was posting about. in a weird way it feels like even more of a commercial package than the overlooked, slow burn "dark waters" from a few years ago (both movies were brought to haynes by their lead actors).

and for all the talk about moral unknowability if anything it actually does feel a bit pat - haynes talking about fassbinder in the press tour makes me think that rwf, for example, would not be anywhere near as gentle to the chris melton figure, who gets to act as a figure of unambiguous audience sympathy in a way that i'm not sure is all that interesting.

still some great performances and scenes, very confident down to the smallest gestures in a way that is easy to take for granted from haynes at this point, whatever my other reservations might be.

[rischka]

i swear i was saving this for the snow thread. the name of the film is snow (neige, 1981)











but it's not about the weather and more about juliet berto and streetlife in pigalle. a lovely humanist film about all the 'bad' people and their troubles ♥

directed by berto and jean-henri roger. good music too. ofc i couldn't resist posting executioners from shaolin marquee sry snow thread

[rischka]

the holdovers became far too heartwarming for me but as christmas movies go one could do a lot worse