Recently Watched Films 2018

[Dan Warburton]

Serge Gainsbourg, Je t'aime moi non plus, 1976

This is really really bad. I mean, really. As if the original song wasn't stoopid enough (all that coming and going entre tes reins), this half-baked, badly-acted (actually, I rather like Joe Dalessandro because he can't act, but here somehow it doesn't work - probably because nobody can act), shoddily-edited affair only achieved its cult status, one assumes, because of the sex. Which consists of Ms Birkin being buggered and squealing like a stuck pig. No, you don't see anything but she makes a helluva racket. Actually, we saw this movie about a week ago now and I've already forgotten how it ends. Won't be going back to reaquaint myself, either.

[Steve Minkin]

My favorite short story (from my favorite book of short stories) and one of my favorite renditions of literature on film. Magnificent.

To be credible, Huston had to leave intact that long, sublime internal soliloquy at the end. And he did.

Actually he didn't, although he did a nice job of rewriting it into first person without losing too much of the poetry and detail. Not sure how a shift to the third person voice would have worked there.

Pardon the long, geeky digression, but it's material I love and if anybody else is interested you can see how the ending was modified. (The end of Ulysses, Molly, is written in first person, and required no change for the film.)




She stopped, choking with sobs, and, overcome by emotion, flung herself face downward on the bed, sobbing in the quilt. Gabriel held her hand for a moment longer, irresolutely, and then, shy of intruding on her grief, let it fall gently and walked quietly to the window.



She was fast asleep.

Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt's supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

[walto]

BEING THERE (1979) -- Peter Sellers, Shirley McLaine, Melvyn Douglas

I was so disappointed in the novel (which had been massively hyped as a comic masterpiece) 8 or 9 years earlier, that I skipped the film in the theaters, and never saw it until yesterday. Entertaining, pretty funny, fine performance by Sellers. I don't intend to reread the book, but I think the film may have served the concept better than the book did. Anybody who liked the book care to chime in?

As I've mentioned here before, the problem with the movie--as my daughter pointed out to me--is that Sellars (who is great in it, nevertheless) isn't handsome enough. The book has Chance as a dreamboat, and the movie also has it that every woman who meets him is blown away, but fancy clothes aren't enough to make that believable. They (understandably) wanted Sellars for his comic genius, but he's pretty badly miscast.

[Steve Minkin]

As I've mentioned here before, the problem with the movie--as my daughter pointed out to me--is that Sellars (who is great in it, nevertheless) isn't handsome enough. The book has Chance as a dreamboat, and the movie also has it that every woman who meets him is blown away, but fancy clothes aren't enough to make that believable. They (understandably) wanted Sellars for his comic genius, but he's pretty badly miscast.

Good point. I'd forgotten that from the book, and it does make his effortless ascent more believable.

[Dan Warburton]

Toldja before Walt.. Peter Sellars is the opera director



Claude Chabrol, Juste avant la nuit, 1971

We just lost Stéphane Audran yesterday - this time I'm not posting a separate RIP page, because a) they never get much further than the first two posts and b) the older I get the more RIPs I'm likely to "celebrate" (until someone celebrates mine) - so we watched this by way of homage. She got a BAFTA award for it, though to my mind it's not her greatest performance (she's better in La femme infidèle or La Rupture imo).. but what an odd film this is. It starts out with Michel Bouquet (excellent as always) who (accidentally? on purpose?) strangles his lover (S/M got carried away?), who turns out to be the wife of his best friend. And then feels guilty, Raskolnikov-like, all the way through the movie, eventually confessing to both his wife (Audran) and his pal (François Perier). But far from being shocked into handing him over to the police - an ineffectual bunch: Chabrol likes cops about as much as Hitchcock - they basically tell him to forget all about it. WTF? Well, you could argue - as did my wife - that it's another acidic skewering of bourgeois mores, which the director excelled at, but somehow that doesn't work for me. Maybe, as someone posted somewhere, if Bergman had been directing, it might have come off.. Anyway, if you like extremely tacky 70s décor and architecture, you'll love it. Trivia point for anyone interested: the street at the opening of the movie is, if I'm not mistaken, the rue des Eaux (Paris 16ème), shot presumably from the rooftop of the Musée du Vin. The apartment on the next street to the left is where Marlon got busy with the butter in Last Tango in Paris

[Dan Warburton]

Peter Fonda, Idaho Transfer, 1973

"A cross between a brilliant masterpiece and an idiotic mess" indeed, Peter Fonda's sci-fi adventure (though adventure isn't really the word) seems to have fallen into the public domain, which means you can find a copy on YouTube just as good (i.e. just as bad) as the one I snatched from KG. The storyline is relatively simple: some smart scientists in a bunker in Idaho have discovered a way to transfer (beam me up Scotty) young folks 56 years into the future, after an unnamed ecological or probably nuclear catastrophe, so that they can, erm, found a new civilisation. Of course, things go badly wrong - instead of fucking like bunnies in their shiny orange tents in the lava field, the kids realise that their reproductive tackle has been terminally fucked by the transfer experience, and they're doomed, basically. Our heroine Karen finds her way back to 1973 but finds the project HQ has been taken over by armed and not particularly nice government personnel, so she swipes a screwdriver (?) and beams herself back to the equally awful future, where she's picked up by a family of elite survivors and thrown in the boot of the car - as fuel for the vehicle. Not so much "Soylent Green is people" as "people is petrol" haha. For all its many flaws it's likely to stick in your mind. Good year, 1973.

[Dan Warburton]

Robert Aldrich, The Last Sunset, 1961

Kirk Douglas produced as well as starred at Bren(dan) O'Malley, the black-shirted (and yellow-necktied - ridiculous!) baddie (well, not quite) pursued into Mexico by sheriff Rock Hudson, before they team up rather improbably to take a herd of cattle back into Texas across the Rio Grande, where the lawman will serve his warrant, both falling for Dorothy Malone - and in Kirk's case - her 16-year-old daughter in the process. Dalton Trumbo, who penned the rather incongruously wordy script (what the hell is all that tosh about sea mares Douglas raps on about?), adds three drooling villains to the party of cowpokes, for no other reason than to have them gunned down by our two leading men. Oh, and there are some singing meskins, some injuns and.. incest! Yo! It's the kind of western Douglas Sirk might have made if he'd had less taste - and in the hands of kitschmeister Aldrich it's as gooey and smelly as a rotten peach. The western was clearly suffering from indigestion in '61, but was nursed back to health by a diet of spaghetti a couple of years later. Still, you might enjoy this, if you have some Alka Seltzer handy

[Dan Warburton]

James Benning, Easy Rider, 2012

"I used the same organising strategy for Easy Rider as I used for my remake of Faces (John Cassavetes, 1968): that is, I made each of my films the same length as the original films with the same amount (and length) of scenes, respectively. For Faces I copied close-ups from Cassavetes’ film and replaced each scene with these close-ups matching the amount of screen time each actor had for each scene. In Easy Rider I replaced each scene with just one shot made at the original location. So rather than glean material from the original film (like I did in Faces) I made my own shots for Easy Rider. Many times I filmed things that were merely passed-by in the original film, things that had been relegated to the background. By doing this I focus more strongly on place and less on the narrative."
Fascinating stuff - the quote above comes from this long and very interesting interview http://www.lolajournal.com/5/benning.html , which will probably take you as long to read as it would for you to watch the film. I heartily recommend both.

[walto]

Toldja before Walt.. Peter Sellars is the opera director

Oops. In philosophy there are two famous Sellars--Roy Wood and Wilfrid. Father and son. (The son is a bigger deal.)

[Alastair]

Roy Wood

[Antoine]

Phantom Thread
Paul Thomas Anderson (2017)

Usually not a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson movies, but I quite enjoyed this one and its mystery, especially since... spoiler here.

[Dan Warburton]

Thomas Vinterberg, Dear Wendy, 2005

Slant says it better than I can https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/dear-wendy , so I won't waste more time writing about it now. Already wasted 1h45 watching it last night.

[Dan Warburton]

Arthur Penn, The Missouri Breaks, 1976

Return visit six years later, and liked it even more. Not much to add to earlier thoughts http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic. ... ks#p232376 - the scene with Brando and the carrot is priceless.

[Dan Warburton]

Sally Potter, The Party, 2017

Nice little (70-minute) seven-man huis clos black comedy with, as they say, an all-star cast. Nowhere near as much fun as Polanski's Carnage, imo - it's rather hard to imagine the ragged, weary Timothy Spall stealing Cilian Murphy's wife, but never mind (oops did I spoil something?).. Entertaining stuff.

[Dan Warburton]

Yves Boisset, Le juge Fayard, dit 'Le Sheriff', 1977

As with Dupont Lajoie (see above), I hope a decent BluRay release won't be long coming, because this is another excellent 70s French cop movie. Boisset was obviously aware of what was going on on the other side of the Atlantic - you could argue that this is a Gallic take on Dirty Harry - but establishing it in the context of post-Algerian war right-wing corruption gives it a particularly French resonance (it's loosely based on real events, though they didn't take place in the grim mining town of Saint Etienne where this film is shot). Once more, Patrick Dewaere is excellent as the impetuous investigating magistrate, and there's a fine supporting cast, with solid performances from Philippe Léotard, Marcel Bozzuffi (once more playing the villain) and the mighty Jean Bouise. Fortement recommandé.

[Dan Warburton]

Clint Eastwood, Play Misty for Me, 1971

I've always had a soft spot for Eastwood's directorial debut, shot in one of my favourite places (hell, I won't say no to anyone who offers us a house on Spindrift Drive, Carmel CA) and with great footage of, amongst others, the Cannonball Adderley group at the Monterey Festival https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mh7IA9e-BE Jessica Walter's Evelyn is one of the great psychotic female villains (Sharon Stone and Glenn Close owe royalties, imo) and the explosive violence is superbly filmed and edited. That'll teach you to play imaginary board games at the bar with Don Siegel, Clint.

[Dan Warburton]

François Ozon, Ricky, 2008

I haven't read Rose Tremain's short story Moth on which this is based, and probably won't, as I think the film works perfectly well on its own. Hard to discuss it without spoiling something for you - all I'd say is pay attention to the opening monologue and watch carefully how the first part of the film concentrates on the little girl.. Ozon handles the shift from dreary Dardenne-like social realism into poetic fantasy very well. Good stuff.

[Dan Warburton]

Robert Altman, Images, 1972

Great stuff - terrific performances from all concerned, especially Susannah York in one helluva difficult role, oscillating wildly between frightened housewife and uncontrollable sexpot, magnificent cinematography from the mighty Vilmos Zsigmond and splendid editing by Graeme Clifford.. plus stunning location footage from the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin (not that the film never explicitly makes clear we're in Ireland). Schizo par excellence, this is Lynch years before Lynch - any fans of Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr who haven't seen this one are strongly encouraged to check it out. Top notch!

[Dan Warburton]

Denis Villeneuve, Sicario, 2015

I've been slogging through a Jóhann Jóhannsson box set (frustrating stuff - and I could write at length why it annoys me so much, but I won't), which is in part why I bought (for once, ha) the DVD. Mercifully, his music is mixed down behind the ambient noise of police cars and the like, instead of being rammed down your earhole like the soundtracks of the execrable Zimmer, and it works well. It's a good film, with standout performances from Del Toro and Brolin and Emily Blunt, drawn unwittingly into a world of legally questionable CIA covert operations. Interesting to read how the original scripted ending got modified along the wayhttps://thefilmstage.com/news/the-origi ... change-it/ - I guess they were already thinking of the sequel. Which is on its way later this year, I see, though with neither Blunt nor Villeneuve on board.

[Dan Warburton]

Antoine d'Ormesson, Le faux pas, 1965

Cousin of the late celebrated académicien Jean d'Ormesson, Antoine is - it would seem - more famous for designing golf courses (honest) than for making films, and I'd hazard a guess that he made them more as a hobby than anything else (seems he had the money to, after all) - and that's what makes this one so original. It's a simple enough tale of the husband who fakes his own death, out to get his paws on his rich pretty wife's money, gaslighting the poor girl into thinking she's going mad - hitching a lift away from the cliffs of the calanques where (she thinks) Robert has fallen to his death, she tells the guy who's picked her up that she's an English tourist who's had her car stolen. (As an insurance assessor he's not fooled, and eventually finds out what's really going on.) D'Ormesson casts relatively little-known actors - Yori Bertin had minor roles in Ascenseur pour l'échafaud and, later, Rivette's La réligieuse, while Dominique Paturel made his living dubbing numerous American movies and TV series into French - and seems to have little interest in traditional film noir pacing, which reminds me more of another dilettant filmmaker, Alain Robbe-Grillet. It's really quite original, and well-done - and at 80 minutes doesn't overstay its welcome.