Last Watched

[Joks Trois]

Suspiria (2018): horror for people who don't like horror. This director is a big fan of Aronofsky. Surprised this hasn't been pointed out. His Suspiria is like a more pretentious version of Black Swan with its mix of desaturated drabbish color, dance, horror, 'feminism' and psychoanalysis, but he isn't as talented as Aronofsky, not that I'm a big fan of Aro myself. It's overlong and features annoying music by Yorke that seems completely out of place and desperately vying for respectability, which is the last thing a horror film should be concerned with. Throw in an annoying Swinton in a dual role and that seals its fate.

Some good shots etc, but it doesn't amount to much. Takes a stupid subject seriously to the point of absurdity. 4.5 or 5.

[nrh]

and i sort of object to calling poker gambling, but that's not really that important! if anyone's interested, i have a very much unloved list of poker films on letterboxd, here.

you should definitely check out at least the johnnie to directed casino raiders; the climactic scenes are really fun and it's a hell of a movie.

it's not poker but his wonderful mahjong comedy fat choi spirit captures some of the same energy as the best poker movies (there seems to be a pretty deep well of chinese and japanese mah jong centered films but they're a little hard to track down; there's a whole manga/anime series called akagi for example that is fully centered on a king of jiang-hu type mahjong underworld).

[Roscoe]

BLITHE SPIRIT -- Lean's film of Coward's play. Some lovely moments, and the Technicolor is very pretty. The film just deflates when Margaret Rutherford's Madame Arcati isn't around. She's pure magic, brisk and funny.

[arkheia]

Flirtation Walk (Frank Borzage, 1934)

A lesser known Borzage which quietly swept me off my feet.

Shortly before its Hawaiian Busby Berkeley number, there’s a sublime moment where the full spectrum of romantic curiosity and desire channeling into a firm resolve is traced in Ruby Keeler’s face all within the smallest window of time between Dick Powell closing her passenger door and walking around to the driver’s side of her car.

The brevity of this moment, in which all of Borzage’s romanticism is contained in a single fleeting expression, becomes contrasted in the film’s extended montage of military marches, one fifth of the film’s entire runtime dedicated to the separation between these two characters so that the audience may not only understand their distance but feel it temporally as well. When they finally reunite, Keeler is met with hurtful defensiveness from Powell and, in another sublimely reflexive moment of Borzage’s sensibilities, their mutual realization of love is only revealed to them through the artifice of enacting a musical stage play.

side note: I wonder if Cameron Crowe has seen this film.

[rischka]

beautifully expressed, arkheia. i've been watching 3+ hours of magino village: a tale. there's just something about rice cultivation (and mountain goddesses ♥)





ogawa goes wiseman one better by having villagers re-enact ancestral tales. it must be quite something to live so deeply rooted

[Roscoe]

US -- Jordan Peele's new thriller, and a good time mainly. Some knives are twisted in some social wounds, and it is fun to see people under attack who do more than just scream and die bloodily. Ms. Niyongo's performance is more than great enough to disqualify her from award-season bling.

Spoiler!

I just started to wonder about the whole Tethered thing, how did that work exactly, where did the electricity and water come from, did they really eat only rabbits, does everyone in at least the continental US have a double apparently living directly beneath them, did the Tethered kill only their doubles and so on, all those things you're not really supposed to ask yourself...

In short, I liked the hints about haves and have nots, but I feel the film loses something when it gets all literal. Still, Peele leaves a lot of things hanging, which for me works best with this kind of thing. And I liked the humor -- a movie where there's a boat named B-YACHT-CH has my respect.

[thoxans]

jordan peele. the best filmmaker who ever lived. he's like jesus, abraham lincoln, and steven spielberg combined + 10,000,000 bonus likes cuz the msm told me so

sidenote: this comment is in no way directed directly at roscoe (my boy); just a comment on how much bs publicity i've seen about that film and the peeps behind it

[thoxans]

the shootist (don siegel) ron howard as a badass. lol. this was like a poor man's the man who shot liberty valance, as directed by sam peckinpah's much less talented brother

[rischka]

the long ships (jack cardiff 1964) -- a supposed adaptation of one of my favorite novels (never a good idea) but if you want to see a lurid and badly miscast viking adventure, watch the fleischer film from 1958. my screenshot function isn't working so you're spared richard widmark and russ tamblyn in leather shorts but here's sidney poitier as lando calrissian



cardiff actually shot the fleischer film so i guess he thought he could pull this off. he was wrong. tone was all over the place. harem rape scene played for laughs? no

[greennui]

Cardiff's directorial career didn't quite live up to his work in cinematography did it.

The Girl on a Motorcycle is one of the worst films I've seen this year, though I spent most of the duration screenshoting Marianne Faithfull looking cute so I guess it wasn't a totally wasted watch.

[patrick]

Cardiff's pitfalls (overlooked by critics alike) are merely indicative of a wider issue with British cinema, and these individuals ought to be vilified at any given opportunity.

I miss Paulo

[rischka]

he's gardening.

[patrick]

[pabs]

The Girl on a Motorcycle is one of the worst films I've seen this year, though I spent most of the duration screenshoting Marianne Faithfull looking cute so I guess it wasn't a totally wasted watch.

It's pretty lame, but I really enjoyed its 1960s silliness. It's like a time-capsule of complete daftness and film-making ineptitude, a shoddy amateurish mess that could only have been produced at that particular moment in time. I haven't dared watch it again, but I know I want to, eventually. I get a kick watching celluloid catastrophes sometimes. Despite it all, Marianne Faithfull's a doll here.

About 8 years ago I saw Faithfull in concert at a small outdoor venue. At the time, it'd been only a few weeks since I'd watched The Girl on a Motorcycle. In my seat before the show started, I mentioned to my friend I'd recently seen her in this stupid obscure little film and I immediately sensed a few ears prick up in the seats around us. A few audience members turned towards me and some actually showed surprise at learning such an arcane, weird fact about the star they were about to see and had no idea she'd been in any movies. One of them asked me for the name of the film again and another wrote it down on their concert ticket. So I helped promote The Girl on a Motorcycle to a few people that night. The concert turned out great. And I'm glad this singing legend was immortalized in a 60s flick, even if it was crumby. Not to mention a lot of women would have paid a fortune to kiss Alain Delon back then. It actually helped make her more legendary.

[nrh]

god bless marianne faithfull and hope any of us can have a career second wind like she did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfEz3k7SCUM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw2uJe8b0bI

[pabs]

I think she was the daughter of a lord or something. Definitely from the upper crust of English society. And yet she fell in with bad boys (was with Jagger for a while when who she really wanted was Keith), fast living, drugs, the rock n roll set, sniffing her life away and drinking herself to oblivion in the 60's, 70's. Lucky she didn't end up with Keith Richards or she'd probably have died. All the drugs Keith took back then would have killed an elephant.

So from her lofty, hoity toity background, Faithfull ended up a heroin junky, at one stage sleeping in a cardboard box on a London street, or so the legend goes, before she was rescued and dragged into a recording studio again to cut a new album. The woman seems to have had more resurrections than I've had Easter Sundays. And we're all the richer for it.

[rischka]

i'm glad to have spurred this marianne faithfull remembrance had a fun double feature of musical DtC nominees courtesy of arthur XxXapathy420XxX

first franco rosso's babylon from 1980, with brinsley forde of aswad starring, story of young jamaicans in brixton trying to make it in the face of terrible racism



things seemingly haven't changed much since the days of maggie and ronnie. good film, great music. then a little seen documentary, duende y misterio del flamenco (1952) by edgar neville, with some of the top flamenco stars of the day. colorized tv rip but it's really amazing to watch



thanks arthur!!

[thoxans]

final exam (jimmy huston) pretty good entry into that killer (heh get it?) subgenre known as 1980s-student-slasher flicks. a double bill with slaughter high would be a scream (heh get it? get it!?)

[Silga]

I had Final Exam on my 31 Days of October watch-list for at least two years, but haven't watched it yet. Maybe this year

[Roscoe]

Criterion Channel Surfing -- checked out SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, the purest expression of the sense of humor that Bergman worked so hard to suppress later, and almost completely delightful, damn near perfect. Then the second half or so of RULES OF THE GAME, and it just still works for me anyway. Then some of Asquith's PYGMALION, and then all of FANTASTIC PLANET, which I know I haven't seen complete since the 1970s when HBO actually ran things like that, and I doubt I'll need to see it again -- way too many shots of Big Weird Alien Plant And Animal Life as tiny Om figures march in single file.

[rischka]

anyone seen high life yet?? i see every rating from 5 stars to 1 among my letterboxd follows

[mesnalty]

I loved it, but then I almost never fail to love Denis.

[Silga]

I've seen it and it's a 1 star film for me.

[rischka]

interesting! as a scifi fan i feel compelled to watch...

although i didn't feel that way about interstellar or arrival

[mesnalty]

It's not at all like Interstellar or Arrival (which is surely part of why some people are so turned off by it), so I'd still recommend checking it out. Philippe Grandrieux doing sci-fi is a closer comparison for some of the scenes.

[greennui]

I watched it two days ago and I'm still processing it. I'd say it's a singular Denis film first and foremost, then a prison film and lastly a science fiction film.

[kanafani]

I found Let the Sunshine In disappointingly bland, forgettable and not up to the crisp Denis standards, so kind of nervous for that one, but I will most definitely watch it.

[Joks Trois]

Bland is a good word for Denis in general imo. Never rated her films that much. Haven't seen one I'd give more than a 5.5 or 6/10.

Cold War: Classy. Maybe too classy. This director doesn't waste shots, but overall I felt this had the exact opposite problem of Ida: there is too much going on and not enough time to develop it all. Visually it looks more refined, but it isn't as interesting to me. I liked the constant use of negative space in Ida as it informed the character and her relationship to her surroundings and her world. Cold War seems more like it's gunning for awards season. Having said that, it's damn well made, can't deny that, but it's almost too 'obvious' in what it's doing and how it's doing it to praise unreservedly. It's also nice to know that good looking couples suffered just as much as other couples during 'war time'.

6.5. Maybe 7.

[rischka]

i dunno if y'all have any interest in this but the film of beyonce at coachella is kind of great



slay queen

[thoxans]

bey and i have the same bday