SCFZ

A thread to share movies that you've rewatched recently. Always interesting to reassess things years (sometimes decades!) later.

In 2020, I had a bunch of great rewatches. Pretty much everything I've loved in the past has held up. Beau Travail and Goodbye South, goodbye are still among my very favorite movies of all time. I guess my tastes have not changed much in the past 15-20 years. Or am I in terminal art stagnation?

Great rewatches of 2020:

• New Rose Hotel
• Four Nights of a Dreamer
• A Gentle Woman
• The Devil, Probably
• Cutter’s Way
• The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein
• The Puppetmaster
• Goodbye South, goodbye
• A City of Sadness
• Wanda
• Jerichow
• Beau Travail
• Simone Barbes or Virtue
• Calendar
• Doomed Love

I also revisited some action movies:

• Die Hard (classic)
• True Lies (classic)
• Inception (I enjoy Nolan for the most part. He makes entertaining movies. I just block out the silly self-importance)
• Blackhat: Liked it more than the first time, but I've seen better movies from the Mann.

I rewatched a couple Hitch ones that I ended up liking even more than before.

Notorious
Rear Window
North by Northwest

Some more fruitful ones:

Ingeborg Holm
After Death
Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein
His Girl Friday
Nightmare Alley
Out of the Past
Pickup on South Street
The Searchers
Rio Bravo
Flaming Creatures
Faces
The Iron Rose

i rewatched some neonoirs for noirvember

king of new york
miller's crossing
the hit

at halloween my umpteenth viewing of night of the living dead

that was fun


other enjoyable rewatches:

lubitsch's angel and to be or not to be
gosha's hitokkiri
to's throw down
tsui's dangerous encounters of the first kind and shanghai blues
fritz lang's spies
melville's le cercle rouge and le doulos
ruiz - three crowns of the sailor
abdel salaam - the night of counting the years
(the last two recent restorations)


and favorites including

band baaja baaraat, the naked dawn, seven samurai, wagon master, dainah la metisse and the marx brothers in monkey business

i've made an effort this year to do rewatches for the first time and have really enjoyed them, several much more than before

notably king of new york, le cercle rouge, spies and throw down

greennui wrote: ↑Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:01 pm Hitch

I don't think I've seen a Hitch in years. I'll pick a few for 2021.

My plan is to rewatch one movie per week in 2021

Re-watched both Bad Timing and Insignificance.
Bad Timing remains pretty much as I remembered it. Not much to be gained on a repeat viewing, but the magic of its form holds tight for me. Insignificance, was a bit more revelatory. I felt I got a bit more out of it this time around. Though I loved it initially as well.

Christmas viewing of Eyes Wide Shut didn't reveal anything to me... but it remains solidified as a favorite. Love almost everything in the movie except for the way Kidman says "...what Dr. Bill's dickie might be like?" I think she's pretty good in the film (unlike apparently a lot of folks) but I almost want to fast forward that scene just to avoid the delivery of that specific line.

Rewatched THE BLUES BROTHERS last night, and like what I like and don't like what I don't like. It's kind of a grab bag. I like Landis' way with a musical number more than Rob Marshall or Bill Condon's. Aretha's "Think!" number is a joy, as is Calloway's "Minnie The Moocher." And those massive car wrecks impress in this CGI age. But well, you know, I don't care if I never see it again.

In re: EYES WIDE SHUT -- yeah, Ms. Kidman's giddy stoned act goes a bit far, but her description of her obsession with the naval officer remains my favorite acting from her. Another candidate to revisit.

Got some re-watches on the horizon -- the revised GODFATHER III, Cronenberg's CRASH, RETURN OF THE KING. This being Christmastime, the Sim CHRISTMAS CAROL will be viewed tomorrow.

Roscoe wrote: ↑Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:59 pm This being Christmastime

Roscoe, you should rewatch Die Hard, totally like one the best Christmas movies ever

kanafani wrote: ↑Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:44 pm

greennui wrote: ↑Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:01 pm Hitch

I don't think I've seen a Hitch in years. I'll pick a few for 2021.

My plan is to rewatch one movie per week in 2021

I plan to rewatch more stuff by high-canon directors. They often tend to feel like completely new films due to me being a more seasoned cinephile/human being.

NOT COUNTING SHORTS COS I REWATCH A LOT OF THOSE

5/5
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Éric Rohmer, 1987)
They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)
Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1990)
Absolute Giganten (Sebastian Schipper, 1999)
I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini, 1953)
Kicking and Screaming (Noah Baumbach, 1995)

4.5/5
Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996)
Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman, 1978)
The Pleasure of Being Robbed (Joshua Safdie, 2008)
Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001)
They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)
On the Bowery (Lionel Rogosin, 1956)
Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)
Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)
Le Corbeau (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1943)
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
Tape (Richard Linklater, 2001)
Where Danger Lives (John Farrow, 1950)

4/5
Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953)
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
School of Rock (Richard Linklater, 2003)
Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)

3.5/5
It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (Richard Linklater, 1988)
Se7en (David Fincher, 1995)
The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)
The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005)
Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000)
Bad News Bears (Richard Linklater, 2005)
Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950)
The Newton Boys (Richard Linklater, 1998)
Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006)

3/5
Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002)
SubUrbia (Richard Linklater, 1996)
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (Danny Leiner, 2004)
Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001)
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
Kindergarten Cop (Ivan Reitman, 1990)
Primer (Shane Carruth, 2004)

2.5/5
Moving (Alan Metter, 1988)
Fast Food Nation (Richard Linklater, 2006)

2/5
Black Angel (Roy William Neill, 1946)
As Good As It Gets (James L. Brooks, 1997)

1.5/5
The Game (David Fincher, 1997)

1/5
Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

0.5/5
Stepmom (Chris Columbus, 1998)
Pi (Darren Aronofsky, 1998)

kanafani wrote: ↑Wed Dec 23, 2020 5:07 pm

Roscoe wrote: ↑Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:59 pm This being Christmastime

Roscoe, you should rewatch Die Hard, totally like one the best Christmas movies ever

As we speak!!

Favorite rewatches of 2020:

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) - finally a cinema rewatch on a very big screen

Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990) - may not be as impressive as when I've seen it for the first time in a cinema, but still a bonkers masterpiece.
Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006) - improved to perfect 10/10 after recent rewatch. Just a monumental, breathtaking film Mann constructed here.
Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007) - still my favorite American film of the 21st century.
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) & The Godfather: Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) - probably the greatest one-two punch in the history of cinema.
Coming to America (John Landis, 1988) - I may be overrating it a little bit, but also NO. Everyone's at the top of their game, esp. Murphy. Not sure how I feel about the upcoming sequel though.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Taika Waititi, 2016) - This is an extremely joyous film. One that works great on a rewatch. Its soundtrack needs a separate praise - simply majestical.
Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011) - been my favorite in 2011 and I defended this unique piece of cinema till these days when it almost became a documentary. Also greatest collaboration between Soderbergh and Cliff Martinez.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981) - reinforced my opinion that outside the Star Wars universe, Raiders might be my most beloved adventure flick.
Vox Lux (Brady Corbet, 2018) - just as impressive a second time around. I'm not a big fan of Sia, but here songs in Vox Lux work perfectly.
The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973) - con artists' bible.
The Beach Bum (Harmony Korine, 2019) - watched it twice in a cinema on its original run and rewatched this year again. Not sure if it can top Spring Breakers, but still a lovely, peaceful meditation with Moondog.

Casablanca, Kane, the latter on the big screen, both films I hadn't seen since my mid-teens, both spectacular.
Re-watched a bunch of Rohmers which is always a delight.
Re-watched Hal Hartley's Amateur a few days ago which cemented its position in my top 50.

Other good things:
Once Upon a Time in America
Four Lions
Metropolitan
Zodiac
Wild at Heart
Collateral
La Haine
Christmas in July
Broadcast News
Shadows in Paradise
Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears
Ocean's Eleven
Good Time

not a lot of stuff, definitely wanna re-watch a bunch more next year

Y'all really don't want to see a list of my rewatches, because it would be too long. I'm constantly rewatching films I love, films I want to understand better, films I want to reassess, and films I want to show to others. I just checked my top 100, and I've seen them an average of 8 times each. Is that unsusual?

Notable rewatches of 2020

Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
Cobra Woman (Robert Siodmak, 1944)
Little Caesar (Eddie Gee, 1931)
Three Smart Girls (Deanna Durbin, 1936)
Gojira (Ishiro Honda, 1954)
42nd Street (Busby Berkeley, 1933)
My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
Double Indemnity (Eddie Gee, 1946)
Page Miss Glory (Tex Avery, 1936)
Plan 9 from Outer Space (Ed Wood, 1959)
Sleeping Beauty (Disney, 1959)
One Hundred Men and a Girl (Deanna Durbin, 1937)
Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941)
Footlight Parade (Busby Berkeley, 1933)
Gold Diggers of 1933 (Busby Berkeley, 1933)
Dames (Busby Berkeley, 1934)
Les cartes vivantes (Georges Méliès, 1905)
Three Little Pigs (Disney, 1933)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Thanhouser, 1912)
The CooCoo Nut Grove (Friz Freleng, 1936)
To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
Dracula (Bela, 1931)
Voodoo Man (Bela, 1944)
The Vampire Bat (Lionel Atwill, 1933)

Rewatched Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and found it far more shallow than I found it on first viewing. Finally decided I don't like Rio Bravo. I also renewed my distaste for Nosferatu.

First movie of 2021 was a rewatch!

https://i.imgur.com/CYcuBmo.png

https://i.imgur.com/bOjf8gy.png

https://i.imgur.com/LSXs0Pq.png

First movie of 2021 was a rewatch of some selected bits of Fellini's ROMA -- the outdoor dinner scene, the traffic jam into the city, the fashion show, and the final meander through the city culminating in the motorcyclists ride past those landmarks.

Rewatched The Florida Project yesterday, having basically just moved to the area where it was filmed. While previously I thought the kid scenes tedious to get through, I found myself getting really absorbed in Moonee & her friends' little adventures this time around. Made the sadder stuff later on all the more impactful.

Once upon a time I worshipped Sergio Leone. I still have soft spots for Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, The Bad & The Ugly though I hold neither in nearly as high esteem as I once did, but it's been considerably over a decade since I last watched Once Upon a Time in America, and I just revisited it. What a clusterfuck of a movie. The first half was actually somewhat decent, with the cracks papered over by a great Morricone score and then it manages to ruin any good will it had built up in the second half with a narrative that goes from bad to shockingly bad and pulls every cliche in the book. And I have a high tolerance for violence, but the rape scenes were really badly handled. Each to their own and all but it pains me that this is such a revered movie.

I just rewatched I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians and while I already loved the film and considered it a favourite, I am now convinced it is a near-masterpiece, and it has jumped up to being my favourite film of 2018.

In a way I am hardwired to love this kind of cinema - Jean-Luc Godard is after all my favourite director, and this has similarities to what I LOVE about Godard - i.e. multi-layered commentary/comedy, societal dissection coated in sarcasm, meta elements, playing with context and what is/isn't "real", observing screens, etc.but let's be honest:

Godard could not speak to a mass audience and was coated in theory so specialized it is hard for most to even understand his language - Jude on the other hand - while still stylized and uncompromising - does not at all come from a place of dogmatism - or obfuscating - but unnerving reality - and a real-life thought experiment putting a stark mirror to Romania's past and present.

In fact, it could be said to be one of the most important films of late - especially in light of the rise of Nationalism and the far-right - to start a genuine conversation about Romania's participation in the holocaust - and how historical revisionism/ignorance fumes echos/rhymes.

We follow a production attempting to stage the massacre in Odessa in the public square - the actual staging is hard to watch though - especially as the reaction from elements in the audience (including cheering on anti-semitic speeches - and worse) but I think it manages to be genuinely biting - and put a mirror to Romania. The film actively engages in how Romania does not face their own history, and refuses to engage/acknowledge the past - we get long lists of letters, facts, accounts, including the Nazis finding the Romanians too extreme and too eager to murder jews.

But while the punch is real - it manages to placate a broad spectrum of critique, whataboutism and disinterest - all coated in dark humour - especially from a sleazy beaurocrat eager to censor the play - as well as protests from the actors themselves. The entire film is one of dialogue and dissection - and it all leads up to the climax - which feels thoroughly real - too real - in part because it is shot as if it was. Involving, yet distancing - and more so - truly brechtian - opening with the lead actresses introducing herself and her character - and explaining how they differ - you know you are watching a film - and as always when this happens - the invitation is there to distance yourself ever so much - and judge/question everything you see. An incredible experience.

Ivansxtc was one of my favourite films back when I saw it randomly when it was a list that pretty much said it's up there with Sokurov. It was recently restored by Arrow Films, and I gotta say that even with a film that late 90s/early 00s era handheld digital camera they managed to make it look fantastic. It's a modern adaptation of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and it's honestly better than Ikiru. After watching the restoration I felt confident placing it in my top 10.

One of those types of plots that's all philosophy but made much more accessible by putting it through a fictional narrative. A Hollywood agent who's life is eventful, yet empty, mostly because of his hedonistic lifestyle, ends up getting lung cancer, and has an existential crisis from that. He first does what he also does, ramps up the hedonism, but then realizes that it's all for naught, and eventually breaks down John Huston's son, Danny Huston honestly does a fantastic as hell performance, and I especially loved the simple yet symbolic ending as well.

It does look like a cheap film, and I'm pretty sure I saw the cameraman in one scene, but it is budgetary constraints so I'll cut them some slack. It was made by Bernard Rose who lost all hope about how Hollywood works, and went back to low budget filmmaking, and it shows in this.

I'm sad that almost no one seen this. I'm sure most will prefer Ikiru, but whatever I'm sticking with this.

Metropolitan is absolutely phenomenal and really woke me up too. My confession is that I used to run a fairly large tumblr blog on arthouse cinema when the website was at its prime. Won't link because I'm quite sure the account got hacked and replaced with porn lol. I let my ratings of those films be affected by how much cred I would get for posting them. I did it another way by finding films that maybe 3 people rated on imdb, or aren't even on imdb at all, for more cred. Don't get me wrong, I have found some fantastic films doing this, unearthed quite a few treasures, but now I look through my ratings and there's like a 2 year period where I see a film I gave a high rating too and remember literally nothing about it.

The people in Metropolitan can be seen as despicable, but I see it as a fairly accurate coming-of-age story. Liking stuff, or talking about deep stuff to others just to try to impress them, or perhaps to fit in. It's a natural thing to do and I was barely older than them when I did that. Almost 30 now, and I'm realizing that oddly enough sincerity is what is seen as the most impressive. I'm damn proud to say that I could do a double bill of a collection of Brakhage shorts and The Mummy, and love them both.

Also realizing that as I'm older my taste will obviously be vastly different, and those "classics" that I couldn't get into might be better now. I wanna give Bunuel, Fellini, Godard, and Bergman another chance. I did rewatch Bergman's Winter Light last year and absolutely loved that one, when I didn't give a shit about it 10 years ago.

Coincidentally, I re-watched Barcelona yesterday and was blown away by how it melds the hilarious and the poignant, with the central relationship between cousins allowing Stillman to explore friendship, familial ties tinged with childhood resentment, ideological and romantic battles, pranks, the settling of financial scores, and so on, and so forth. It sort of leaves all the other characters by the wayside, but the idea of setting a coming-of-age film in the recent past ('in the last decade of the Cold War') which seems to be an another era entirely, as well as populating the film with people facing professional and romantic cross-roads in their 20s, maybe early 30s, rather than the usual high school / college students is utterly brilliant, as are Eigeman and Nichols in the main parts.

i'm rewatching humanity & paper balloons and then tange sazen and the pot worth a million ryo!

after that i may do the ranown cycle again

rischka wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 10:50 pm after that i may do the ranown cycle again

did we ever pick a western month to go with our spooky and noir months?

no but it should be in summer

Yeah, summer's pretty much the only time I'm watching westerns. Need a fancy name twist on June/July or August like Noirvember/Hooptober tho.

june on the range

Pretentious Hipster wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 1:49 pmMetropolitan is absolutely phenomenal and really woke me up too

films that are good but also autobiographically (autofilmographically?) eyeopening are da best! yours is a very similar reaction that i had to metropolitan. for me, there were superficial similarities, like my name and a personally important former flame's name are the names of two characters in the movie; and similar to the protag, i was predisposed of class consciousness (and maybe a skosh of social climbingness), growing up working/lowermiddle class around a bunch of uppermiddle/upper class kids; and it also does a damn fine job of making me reminisce about living in nyc, and i think for anyone who's ever lived in nyc, metropolitan does well capturing those late night walks on a cold winter night when nearly all the lights in the city are dim and the streets are mostly empty. but beyond the superficial, it's also wonderfully accurate about a particular age (disregarding that it's also about a particularly affluent group of people). living life through parties. living life through peoples' parents' houses/apartments where those parties take place. being up all night, and sleeping all day (which i luvvv how the film does this subtly; it's not particularly glaring the fact that this is a nighttime movie). and the biggest thing, as you alluded to, is the sincerity. so much of youth is posturing and pandering. unrealized ideas of who we are or who we want to be or what we want or what we think we want, so we pretend. like in a jane austen novel

MrCarmady wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 2:18 pmBarcelona

stillman's '90s trillogy (to quote the curtis) was awesome in that those three films alone imo were enough to cement the guy as a staying figure with a very distinct style or vision or voice or whatever you wanna call it. while i enjoyed love & friendship, and haven't seen damsels in distress, had stillman retired after just those three, he woulda left a legacy, like how some folks talk about malick after badlands and days of heaven. it might have been more on the apocryphal side, sure, but peeps still woulda talked about him in hushed tones, like 'yo you remember that guy? yeah he was good.' think barcelona is by far the most beautiful of the three, but perhaps loses a bit of its character; remember it being more time-and-place-focused than people-focused. the last days of disco is like a good summation of the previous two. to use a flip scale:

metropolitan
content - 5
style - 3
overall - 4

barcelona
content - 3
style - 5
overall - 4

the last days of disco
content - 4
style - 4
overall - 4

4 =

The thing about metropolitan is that there's a guy who doesn't read books, he only reads criticism cos then he gets the value of having read the book and having read the critical essay. In a way I can't totally explicate, this predicts the proliferation of the online exchange of ideas