Last Watched

[mesnalty]

Something Good - Negro Kiss, a recently restored 1898 film which is the first known depiction of African-American intimacy on screen. Just got added to the National Film Registry, and it's a thing of beauty.

[sally]

I saw the guiraudie one Xmas with my father. A mistake.

[wba2]

still watching a ton of (mostly) shitty German 2018 feature films for the annual german film critics prize. It's torture, I hope I'll never have to do this again.
Currently at 48 seen out of 98...

[sally]

ok weird day.

started it with a bunch of 1907's - inc. "feuillade"'s the magnetized man, which has a very odd sexual ending, so then i went for a cold shower and watched some snowy films, only to find the sexual deviancy continued when BUSTER KEATON raped a woman! what???? (the frozen north) - then i watched the film where 27 people died making it - the viking. has anyone seen this? i thought the river log-dancers in finnish films were tough, but i was opened-mouthed watching the ice-skipping seal-hunt, and that's not where they all died.

and then i watched frantisek cap's white darkness (the russians will save us!) the most notable thing being that i think this is the first time i've ever been the first person to log a virgin film on letterboxd (aside from the ones i added myself).

think i'm going back to pirates....it's more innocent....

[Javier]

Finally I watched Cannibal Holocaust. I'm so glad I did. It had been ages without watching a challenging film. My brain is happy and blown up. I'll need some weeks to digest the experience.

[Joks Trois]

BlacKkKlansman: This probably won't surprise anyone, but I thought this was kind of a bullshit film for a number of reasons. Firstly, it has zero energy. Secondly, it is visually uninteresting. It looks like a polished TV film for the most part and aside from some interesting crosscutting and a 'floating heads' style effect at a black empowerment speech, there was nothing much to look at. Thirdly, tonally it's in no man's land. It's not clever enough to work as satire and not outrageous enough to work as farce. Fourthly, the politics are lazy and cheap and completely conformist. When Spike made Bamboozled, he was going out on a limb. BlacKkKlansman is just pandering to the reductive politics of the day, and I found most of it rather embarrassing from this standpoint (e.g Klan members cheering on lynching in Birth of a Nation, linking Trump to recent tragic events involving idiotic right wingers etc). Perhaps time has caught up with him, and the concerns he showed in his heyday have now become the broader concerns of the culture at large. This isn't a bad thing, but BK comes across as safe compared to his more incendiary works.

Consequently, the lack of PASSION is awfully conspicuous. It's lifeless and dull and feels like an assignment. Spike is just going through the motions and barely shows any real emotional investment in the material. Just about anyone could have directed it. I did not feel the righteous anger of Do The Right Thing, Bamboozled or Summer of Sam. It's a real flatline in this respect. He is an older man now, so it's unrealistic to expect that kind of film from him at this stage of his career, but the fire has not been replaced by wisdom. BK is not a thoughtful film by any stretch of the imagination, especially from a 60 year old director.

So yeah, I don't buy that Spike is back at all. This is really nothing like his best work, not even close. It's not even as good as his second tier films like Bamboozled and He Got Game. Hell I don't even think it's as good as Girl 6 or She Hate Me for that matter. It's just a weak effort from a director whose quality of output has been in steep decline for well over a decade. Sure there are some decent scenes and performances and a few chuckles here and there, but don't believe the hype on this one. 5/10

[Silga]

Palmetto (Volker Schlöndorff, 1998) 7/10

My first Schlöndorff, but he wasn't the main draw to watch this film.

Woody Harrelson was. And he is a perfect fit for the role.

The film is rather light on neo-noir elements, but story-wise it get's going pretty fast and captures attention from the first introduction of main characters.

What follows in the story, reminds in a way of Body Heat and even The Big Lebowski (the whole kidnapping thing and even the way of delivering the ransom money). But Lebowski was released the same year as Palmetto, so any similarities are accidental, I guess.

The only and rather big drawback is the third act where everything, including script and directing went downhill.

However, it was a nice film to watch, at least as an introduction to Schlöndorff, even though I'm sure there were better films to start with.

[Roscoe]

POLICE OFFICER -- Tomu Uchida's silent policier from 1933. Handsomely made, no doubt, with lots of tasty location (and location-seeming) cinematography. The story felt a bit prolonged, and the little anthem to the police near film's end was shoe-horned in with a dismaying bluntness. Glad I saw it, but the real highlight of the experience was the announcement that a new restoration of von Stroheim's wackadoo THE WEDDING MARCH will be hitting Film Forum in March.

[augusto]

went out to eat pho after teaching my last class of semester, and shoplifters was playing at the nearby cinema, so checked it out. not a kore-eda fan, but found a bit more of interest here than in the two or three i remember watching many years ago. sakura ando is quite astonishing and if, despite a fascinating central premise, the film didn't entirely work for me, it's because the rest of it seems to lack the lived-in edge of her performance.

[rischka]

i watched a christmas movie

it happened on fifth avenue, roy del ruth 1947

one of these 'rich guy finds his heart' heartwarming films with charlie ruggles as a tramp who inhabits fifth avenue mansions while the millionaires have gone south for the winter. not terrible. just kind of implausible i was seeking some underlooked holiday films so i've got this and tangerine

[sally]

i hadn't planned it, but i had a douglas fairbanks career-spanning double bill, both fine films. dwan's a good bad man was so nice looking i even finally learnt how to take screenshots on my phone (except i was low on memory so deleted most of them):



and the private life of don juan, was perhaps a little too in love with its premise, but old doug's more swoonable at in this than the grinning 1916 maniac in the one above...

and sandwiched inbetween (it was a slow day at work) was a neat, absurd, droll little bulgarian film that had me laughing in public on the train home (the hare census, sachariev, 1973) that's just the kind of daft thing i love which means i have no idea if anyone else would. certainly in my top ten bulgarian films. (especially as i've actually only seen five bulgarian films)

as for xmas movies i haven't seen, i made a list - i've got about 40 to watch! although not managed to track down this one yet:

[rischka]

:O how is this not in your list! i thought this was THE british christmas movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE9KpobX9J8

also what about black christmas, christmas evil, gremlins, krampus etc

and if you're watching the silent partner you may as well watch die hard

[thoxans]

to be sure, silent night, deadly night 3: better watch out! (monte hellman) is ofc included in that etc

[Roscoe]

BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY -- Ruttman's city symphony, seen for the first time in a long time, and enjoyed as thoroughly as ever. Somehow I'd never noticed the cinema marquee advertising DER GENERAL BUSTER KEATON before.

[nrh]

finally caught two films at the jacques tourneur retro - anne of the indies and way of the gaucho. anne, which i hadn't seen in years and showed here in an absolutely beautiful print, was the real revelation, an endlessly strange, constantly moving triangulation of desire and guilt and violence in the clearest and most seeming plainspoken narrative form. gaucho's print was pretty beat up, with some weird color distortion throughout, which definitely robbed the film some of its power. still one of the most extraordinary hollywood films; outside of wagon master has any film ever had such great horse riding?

[Roscoe]

COLD WAR -- Pawel Pawlikowski's little tale of love and borders, which I went into almost blind and am glad I did. I liked it a lot.

[sally]

i'm afraid i must have overdone the sherry. i just bawled my eyes out over that enormous ham john barrymore in beau brummel (1924).

[Lencho of the Apes]

... all gouty and forgotten in his Parisian garret...

[rischka]

in an effort to watch more recent cinema, my christmas eve movie is tangerine (2015) notoriously shot on the streets of LA with iphones. guess what, i really liked it







i think the whole film takes place on christmas eve. it's raw but it's got a lot of heart

[Curtis, baby]

Mysterious Skin - the perfect Christmas Eve movie, obviously. I've upgraded this from my #7 oat to my #3 oat - now my favourite American movie ever.

Everyone should watch this movie. Alone. Watch it alone. It's an important experience to have, I would think, for any human being

[MatiasAlbertotti]

I went to the theater to watch Aquaman last friday. A friend of mine had a 2x1 promo and he invited me. I went in with a feeling that I was going to hate the movie, and in a way I did, but I also liked it. Wan makes a visually stunning world under the sea and there are some great sequences here and there. It's over the top all the way, but the story is a mess, and I left the cinema with a sensory overdose that gave me a headache.
I don't know how many point to put on this one and I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but it was entertaining at least.

[Joks Trois]

Wan or the CGI technicians? It is difficult to tell who did what in those behemoth productions. Select scenes I saw recently looked godawful though.

A Ghost Story: more American dumbing down of foreign arthouse cinema. There is a reason that Bela Tarr or Tsai never made a film about a guy walking around in a sheet grieving over lost love: because it's stupid. Some OK scenes, but it was too much BS to take after a while. Too cutesy and twee and vaguely hipster., and there is a pessimistic monlogue that seems ripped from Turin Horse. The aspect ratio is like Jauja and Faust. Meh. 4.5/10

The House With a Clock In Its Walls: Passable, but Roth should stick to horrors/thrillers. 5/10

Highlander: Dated hokum. Mulcahy has done better work elsewhere. Lambert is a wooden plank. Useless. 4/10

[MatiasAlbertotti]

That's a good question, I'm not a fan of Wan, but at times it has a certain look and feel that reminded me of Insidious.

Still I'm not saying it's a great movie, but compared to the other movies based on DC properties of recent years (not counting Nolan), it's a step up.

Talking with my friend, when the movie finished, he told me about what he called the "Michael Bay effect", which is to pump the spectator up with a lot of visual information, all looking very cool and with fast, sharp cuts, that overloads your brain´s capacity to process information, and at the same time it all looks "glossy and pretty" like a commercial. So you get out of the movie feeling euphoric, but you can't really remember anything specific about the story, just that it looks cool. I think Wan, or whoever calls the shots, where trying to replicate this effect, and that's where I got my headache.

[...]

CGI techs still answer to the director, even if at a remove unless there is some specific separation of chores designated by contract via studio demand or something. That's the rumor for the upcoming production of The Eternals, but I don't know if it would be the case for Aquaman since it isn't being directed by a woman. Oops, I mean an unproven talent at planned budgeting levels. Joking aside, Wonder Woman action scenes definitely had input from Patty Jenkins as that was a notable point of mention after the movie came out regarding differences of opinion between Jenkins and the studio centered around one of the big action set pieces. It suggests the studio may have the final say, but the director is still involved in deciding the way things play out onscreen and the look of them.

[thoxans]

Aquaman

don't like momoa one bit. his was always my least favorite storyline in the early parts of got. he can't act worth a damn, and seems only to have a 'look,' which hopefully gets tired and old soon, so that peeps stop casting him as anything other than a background extra

[thoxans]

more American dumbing down of foreign arthouse cinema

i.e. every sofia coppola movie ever (harumph i feel grumpsters this morning)

[Joks Trois]

more American dumbing down of foreign arthouse cinema

i.e. every sofia coppola movie ever (harumph i feel grumpsters this morning)

Aye, but this is far more blatant than anything I've seen from Coppola. Their similar though in the sense that you produce the milquetoast effect. Bland films where cowardice and/or lack of a strong viewpoint is routinely confused with subtlety. I felt the way about that Jackie film that Greg liked too, but each to their own. Have no interest in middle of the road stuff most of the time.

Downsizing: Is that Vietnamese character for real? 'You have job? Me want job. Me bad need money now'. Interesting concept done in the least imaginative way possible. Just a poor effort all round. Shows little insight into any of the issues it's pretending to address. 4.5/10

[MatiasAlbertotti]

Aquaman

don't like momoa one bit. his was always my least favorite storyline in the early parts of got. he can't act worth a damn, and seems only to have a 'look,' which hopefully gets tired and old soon, so that peeps stop casting him as anything other than a background extra

I don't like him either. At all. They cast him in action roles, but he has no presence.

[sally]

i've decided i'm not talking to anyone today so i can watch nice things.

just watched 'os lobos' on a whim (rino lupo - 1 film seen, 1923) - this is my kind of film! lots of outside countryside, primal passions but no black&white condemnation, layers of allegory, thoughtful mise-en-scene.....and it's very pretty to look at....

[thoxans]

watched the big heat (andrew kam/johnnie to), which is basically my first tsui hark film, even tho it wasn't directed by tsui hark, and i gotta say that i gotta watch some more tsui soon! that thing was aesthetically visceral and brutal, narratively complex (if pleasantly convoluted), and full of an intense energy that only a handful of filmmakers (that i've seen) seem capable of

*sidenote: this was my 23rd to (even tho it's very un-to-like); and my 198th film watched this year (two more to go to get to 200)!