SCFZ

i watched an excellent heist film with stanley baker https://letterboxd.com/film/a-prize-of-arms/

the film is so cryptic i had to get english subtitles- very fast clipped dialogue and army people yelling a lot. great fun tho!

it's in the place if anyone wants it. i'll put the subs too lol

I started watching Bertolucci's 1900 last night. I saw the first 1 hr and 40 mins of it. There's another 3 hours and 40 mins to go until the end. I'm liking it a lot. I'll probably end up seeing it in 3 or 4 parts, depending on what time of day I start watching each part, and how tired or alert I feel.

the testament of caleb meeke - roy spence (1969)

the amateurish nature of this film seems to make the extreme hauntology of place driving it all the more appealing. very arthur machen....

watch here: https://ifiarchiveplayer.ie/the-testame ... leb-meeke/

a man and a camera - guido hendrikx (2021)

An enigmatic entity roams the Dutch hinterlands, silently pointing a camera at all that it encounters. Soon it finds itself standing in front of a doorway. Met with an uninvited, inscrutable camera operator, how will the region’s inhabitants respond?

so after this i learn that a similar thing was done in america (surveillance camera man, 2014) which i haven't seen but i am guessing the dutch are a more secure society because some people react by inviting him into their homes, insane. curiously it's the people that have kids around to explain the inexplicable to that seem to be most relaxed about it....maybe we all need a small therapy child to project onto....

I knew he was shooting this documentary and was lolling when I saw this popping up in the news at some point (google translate needed): https://www.ad.nl/zeeland/man-met-camer ... gle.com%2F

I guess in the province of Zeeland they were more suspicious than inviting .

yeah you even see the police turn up to investigate though they didn't seem to do anything. but one couple invited him in, watched tv with him for a while and then went to bed, just left him in their living room, told him to see himself out whenever he wanted. totally crazy. whole film is a very uncomfortable (i watched through my fingers) but fascinating thing to watch

i finally watched gerry (van sant 2002). i liked it!



van sant has described the film as bela tarr meets tomb raider

i often think of hawaii - elfi mikesch (1978)

this is a lovely doc - the prosaic life and colourful fantasies of an achingly lonely berlin teen (and her family)

une chambre en ville (demy 1982) w/ all the best wallpapers



i wanted to love this and it has moments but what it doesn't have is michel legrand

and then i watched a neat wartime thriller by hugo fregonese - apparently a UK production



seven thunders (1957) combines nazis with a real-life serial killer in occupied france. nice tight direction and fregonese is great with emotions

that's FOUR winners in a row... maybe i just like everything now?? watching 2 films a day during this heatwave so hope i don't get burnout

Knock at the Cabin was definitely worth watching for Bautista's subdued performance. I did enjoy the set up of it too. However, they literally spent minutes explaining the meaning of it, which was a bit much to me, especially when I'm sure a lot of folks will know what it represents just by reading the plot outline and not even watching the film.

retreating to my genre cave ---





gorgeously restored el vampiro negro (1953) by argentine director román viñoly barreto - the argentine M





fun stuff with adorable models - battle in outer space (honda 1959)

i'm going to watch some more kaiju - i've seen many as a kid and don't remember which ones they were (besides mothra ♥)

driver dug, falder rim - irene werner stage (1985)

Adventure film about a girl who must go out and find the werewolf she has been associated with since she was a child, and redeem it and shoot it.

streaming here: https://www.danmarkpaafilm.dk/film/driv ... falder-rim

just finished the werewolf chapter in my book so watched something relevant. watched it without subs cuz thought it would be fine as it just says there's music. actually there's a bit of dialogue but am assuming this is some kind of valerie and her week of wonders-ish girl getting her period type thing. except directed by a woman, so it's not totally offensive.

part one of my kaiju-thon, invasion of astro-monster formerly known as Monster Zero (1965) which obviously rules cuz it has king ghidorah but also space aliens from planet x!!









best spacesuits since planet of the vampires. nick adams is in this as a guy called 'glenn' or 'mr glenn' and i keep wondering if that's mr john glenn... hopefully someone told him about this homage (?) where he dates an alien hottie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdolD2TFtFY

RIP

ok i watched mothra vs godzilla (1964), ghidrah the three-headed monster (1964) and destroy all monsters (1968)!! and i have to ask



is this godzilla's baby. who is this



these are all very fun obviously

Yeah.. that's the Son of Godzilla. https://letterboxd.com/film/son-of-godzilla/

I never saw many of the later ones, so I didn't realize he comes back in other films.

and he is called MINILLA i don't think i need to see more of him, thx monsieur

after that he's only in the genuinely bizarre children's movie all monsters attack!, where he teaches a child to stand up to bullying by showing him stock footage sequences from older godzilla movies. think he might be in final wars but can't remember...

He's the jar jar binks of the godzilla franchise

there's always godzooki!

i promise it's the last one but i couldn't resist one more honda movie - a US-japan co-production! latitude zero (1969)

it's like dr moreau vs captin nemo - with cesar romero and joseph cotton





very silly. how did joseph cotton get here lol

TOWER OF EVIL (o'connolly 1972) this is a proto-slasher, 2 years before black christmas! that said it's pretty cheesy, very 70s and quite fun

another in the terrifying genre of lighthouse thrillers! i really just wanted to say TOWER OF EVIL ! !

lol judging by my recent posts it's just too hot here for much serious viewing

reap the wild wind (demille 1942) reaped a little too much 'gone with the wind' even hattie mcdaniel is here

the sea stuff isn't bad tho, paulette godard gets to save john wayne, playing a hot moody bastard vs ray milland's too clever 'sea lawyer'



quite the dad movie if your dad dove shipwrecks in the carribean



and there's a giant squid battle because of course there's a giant squid battle!!



it's too long and lots of racist stereotypes so i cannot recommend it but i never turned it off

Some friends brought me along on their Barbenheimer venture. Which I'm glad I did.
I liked both films enough. But I somehow have way more qualms with Oppenheimer.

Could not get S3 of Twin Peaks out of my head during the whole trinity test scene, and it's a comparison that does Nolan's film no favors. I seem to like it quite a bit less than everyone else I know.
I was more emotionally invested in Barbie. Maybe because Gerwig doesn't strangle her actors with montage and music? Idk.

A fun cultural moment to peek into.

um more escapism?









don't be fooled like i was! chor yuen's perils of the sentimental swordsman (1982) with ti lung isn't an entry in the sentimental swordsman series! it is in fact the 3rd part of an entirely different series w ti lung beginning with clans of intrigue (1977). so that's part of why i couldn't understand what was going on here... plus the subs went by way too fast. it looked pretty tho. even if i couldn't see ALL the colors...

still watching these ..

more b- movies

city beneath the sea (boetticher 1953) starring robert ryan and anthony quinn



these two swinging bachelors slash salvage divers are loose in jamaica. all the women love them no matter how much they're sexually harrassed. i knew there would be issues when they joked about 6'4" woody strode still being called boy



but hey they're just charming scamps what can you do. oh there's a plot about an underwater city and a voodoo curse and a lot of gold bullion and quinn almost crosses his buddy but ends up saving him and they become bffs. there's a big bar brawl but no giant squid



sea life courtesy of a goldfish bowl. this movie is quite bad and i'm disappointed in these 3

also watched: the earth dies screaming! (fisher 1964) uhh not remotely scary unless you're afraid of toy robots

next up: sign of the pagan (sirk 1954) w jack palance as attila





this isn't exactly good but it's kinda fun to watch

Scorsese's AFTER HOURS, in the new Criterion 4K, a film I had never seen and just couldn't work up any particular interest in while watching it. I'll read up a bit and give it another go, but I just never really found very much interesting about it.

ouch. i've skipped ahead to 1969





i do love the furniture





time of roses, d. risto jarva - days of future past. set in 2012 (?) it's ostensibly about an historian who becomes obsessed with recreating the life of an obscure pinup model from the '60s. in the current perfect world there's no longer war and everyone is happy. well almost everyone

this is a very trippy movie where the hippies 'won' (perhaps they did win finland?) but their utopia is enforced by streams of propaganda while troubling events are carefully hidden. very stylish and the ahem 'dance' parties are something else. or perhaps finnish people writhe on the floor normally, i've no idea

an interesting watch, very dys-utopian

loving the territory

i'm never going to europe now