Recently Watched Films 2020

[Dan Warburton]

Claire Denis, High Life, 2018

Denis and long-time collaborator Jean-Pol Fargeau apparently consulted some whizkid scientist about black holes before they sent Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche and a spaceship full of convicts out into the outer darkness to fly into one. I've never been able to get my head around them myself, having never got any further than page three of Hawking's book, but there's a nice example of what he calls "spaghettification" if you're interested. Elsewhere, it's got that great Solaris / Silent Running / Alien vibe - it's pretty clear early on nobody's going to get of here alive, despite a greenhouse full of carrots, courgettes and corpses (oops, spoiler, haha). But Pattinson once more delivers the goods, and Binoche's mad scientist is terrific. Coming from the director who gaves us Trouble Every Day don't be surprised to see plenty of bodily fluids either. And thank your lucky stars it was Pattinson who ended up playing the lead role instead of Daniel Craig (and before him, Philip Seymour Hoffman..).

[henriq]

This guy reminds me of a friend of mine (of ours, Henrik - I'm thinking of our pal Christian) who must be the only person I know with a house full of LPs, CDs and films.. But it's not him, I checked

I'd like to think he would have told me. Plus, you forgot the wall's worth of comic books in his possession. All the more power to him, a huge archive is a nice thing.

[henriq]

Terry Gilliam - Jabberwocky (1977)

Been on a bit of a Gilliam tip recently, watched every inch of a Monty Python anthology and so thought I’d have a look at this. Commonly accepted now - no? - that Gilliam is the most artistically accomplished and resourceful of the band, though I do think that the Cleese/Chapman team was astounding too. All that flinty officiousness, and the gleeful, delirious picking at scabs and seams in that ideology. But I digress, right at the opening. Jabberwocky was a pleasant surprise - whimsical and silly of course, but if the silliness in Python never really unravelled (the format of the skit containing it, maybe - Fawlty Towers certainly gave Cleese the space and breath to undo himself more mercilessly), here it is unstitching all the time. There is an uncomfortable realness to Palin’s progress and hapless tumble between the different layers of the city/fiction, and the joust between the knights to find the champion to kill the dragon and marry the princess is awesomely messy - the montages here of metal, flesh, blood and trauma are first rate. And the progressively more bloodied trio of princess, king and chamberlain, dithering on about courtly politics as the bodies pile higher, is both silly and distressingly unfunny at the same time. (A corollary of sorts to the more and more stripped naked aristocratic fops pontificating on the treaty of Westphalia in Dennis Moore, he of the lupins.) And the Brueghel-like depiction of the capitalist society within the city walls, where fear of the hideous monster outside keeps the inside flooded with cheap labor, accumulation of wealth and stature coterminous with abject poverty and need, courtly spectacle with apocalyptic fervour, fancy and gritty reality rubbing against each other, actually brings to mind something as apposite and far off as Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.

[henriq]

Claire Denis, High Life, 2018

And thank your lucky stars it was Pattinson who ended up playing the lead role instead of Daniel Craig (and before him, Philip Seymour Hoffman..).

Oh gawd. Surenuffnyesido, or what the man said. Must get this, I gather she picked up quite some ways from that other one you hated?

[Piano Mouth]

Haven't seen any of the Twilight films, but it seems that Kristen Stewart and Pattison are doing well after that mega teen blockbuster. Stewart of course working on two Olivier Assayas films, and wasn't Pattison in a Cronenberg directed film based on a Don Delillo book? and now Kristen is in a new blockbuster movie called Underwater that looks fun to go see. I just saw the new Star Wars, it was highly entertaining from beginning to end, quite long, but it was just one thing after the next for our poor rebellion fighters. Also viewed Bay of Angels, by Jacques Demy, where Jeanne Moreau and costar play persons I never want to end up being, gambling addicted, alcoholic cigarette smokers. Eww I don't know how long I could last as one.

[Dan Warburton]

Well, I've made it to 56 with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, so you can leave me at the roulette table with Jeanne and run off and have fun with your lightsaber, Mark. If there's one thing I never want to end up being it's a Jedi warrior

[Dan Warburton]

Philip Ridley, The Passion of Darkly Noon, 1995

"By the time you get to the giant glittering silver shoe floating in the river, you'll know whether The Passion of Darkly Noon is your kind of insanity," writes Rob Gonsalves in one of the very few positive reviews I can find (only 17% at Rotten Tomatoes) https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php? ... viewer=416
Moral of the story is, perhaps, that if you're driving through a forest at high speed in a pickup truck and see a man lying on the path in front of you, run the bugger over. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passi ... arkly_Noon Actually, for all its pottiness, I enjoyed this - not so sure about the crazy jumpcuts, but the apocalyptic ending is certainly impressive. Worth it all for the look on Viggo's face when he sees an elephant wandering into the smouldering forest clearing..

[Dan Warburton]

Chan-wook Park, Stoker, 2012

Park's Hollywood debut, based on a script penned by Wentworth "Prison Break" Miller, is a visually stylish but ultimately empty and frustrating mishmash of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (complete with an Uncle Charlie) and, amazingly enough, De Palma's Carrie. Mia Wasikowska is, I suppose, perfectly cast as the pale, introvert teen heroine, though she doesn't say much worth remembering. Kidman, looking scarily facelifted and airbrushed, is also right for the part, and her this-is-profound-so-I'll-whisper delivery is presumably just what the producers were looking for. I can imagine the pre-production conf calls: "hey man didja see that movie Oldboy, wow man that was intense like when he ate that octopus and what about when he fucked up all those dudes with a hammer, so we gotta get this guy over here whaddyamean he don't speak English? no sweat man we'll give him Wentworth, like what a cool script nah I didn't quite get it either but no worries we've got Kidman and that other Australian chick to bump up the box office whoa you mean Kidman wants to spend more time with her family? ok wtf we'll just move the shoot to wherever she lives and hey we can get Philip Glass to do the music awesome dude" etc etc

[Dan Warburton]

Jean-Louis Roy, L'inconnu de Shandigor, 1967

That's Shandigor, not Chandigarh.. my wife - architect - spotted this one and thought it might be a documentary on Le Corbusier Not at all: it's a superb sci-fi spy spoof starring Daniel Emilfork as a mad scientist who's invented a machine (the Annulator) which can neutralise atomic bombs and which immediately attracts the attention of various competing teams of spies, some American (though led by an ex-Nazi), some Russian (led by a monocle-sporting crazy called Shostakovich), some oriental and some.. bald, led by none other than Serge Gainsbourg (!) who also contributes a splendid song "Bye Bye Mister Spy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs9U3IUjgrU with a wicked organ solo and some deliciously tacky Hammer decor.. Great fun! Shandigor, by the way, is Barcelona - just the Gaudi buildings, of course. The rest of the film was shot mostly in and around Roy's native Geneva, with music written by his dad, who was a flute player in the Suisse Romande orchestra. Nice bonus docs if you snatch it over at KG.

[Dan Warburton]

Raul Ruiz, The Golden Boat, 1990

"I began to watch television in order to study the iconography of American TV. Then I started watching Mexican soap operas on the cable channels. One day after watching two or three soap operas, I decided to write something using the rhythms of soap operas about some experiences I had many years ago while living in New York. I tried to use the dialogue of soap operas as a kind of music." http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/archives/6150 As you must know by now, Ruiz's films can be real headscratchers, but this one is, ummm, almost conventional (OK, so several people get stabbed and never die, but don't let that worry you). As the quotation above indicates, it's as if RR has picked the choicest clichés of soap and series and done a Gysin / Burroughs cut-up, leading to numerous hilarious non sequiturs and mismatches. Shame the rip is rather duff, as there's a tasty John Zorn soundtrack too. Upgrade and afterlife!

[Steve Minkin]

THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO (2019) -- Best film I've seen since Cold War. Emotionally authentic and powerful and visually arresting and beautiful. The tale of two young black men and the house one of them grew up in. Danny Glover as a grandfather is the only known actor.

Here's the NYT review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/movi ... eview.html
And a review from a black newspaper:
http://www.stlamerican.com/entertainmen ... 55c45.html

Not to be missed.

[Dan Warburton]

Yes, I've heard a lot of good things about this - thanks for the info, will pop it in the shopping bag.



Mario Soffici, Rosaura a las 10, ("Rosaura at 10 o'clock"), 1958

"The story unfolds around the inhabitants of a Buenos Aires boarding house. Ms. Milagros is the owner of the pension where she lives with her three daughters, Camilo Canegato (a shy painter), David Réguel (a law student) and Mrs. Eufrasia, among other characters. For six months, Camilo receives mysterious love letters from a girl who identifies herself as Rosaura. The story between them continues to progress until everything becomes dark when Rosaura is found dead. Now each of the characters will have to give their version of the story." If you like Rashômon (who doesn't?), you really can't afford to miss this one - and the fact that it's not available in a decently restored BluRay with bonus materials is nothing short of criminal. OK, the story is complex, confusing and even arguably somewhat contrived, but the original novel by Marco Denevi has been selling like hotcakes ever since its publication, and Soffici's adaptation widely acclaimed as one of the most successful films to hail from Argentina. I love it when cinema tells lies - Hitchcock always regretted putting that false flashback in Stage Fright, but telling the same story (or stories) from multiple perspectives was never a problem for Kurosawa, nor was it for Soffici. Excellent, highly recommended.

[henriq]

Donald Cammell/Nicolas Roeg - Performance (1970)

This was the one that blew cinema wide open for me, way back when, and I’m happy to report it is still a fucking classic. James Fox in the lead is nothing short of sublime, as is Mick Jagger as himself. Get a young man thinking about montage - stitch together gangland and courtroom, courtroom and Soho porn theatre, bling/flight/sex/iconoclasm, all in the opening, blues rock smashing and dissolving into silence, ambient whisper and electronic rhythm, Delta slide with tablas, Moog drift and pinprick. (Jack Nitzsche is a god.) Then move, as many have noticed, from the aggressive shoot and cut of the first part, Chas as Chas, the cog in the organ, into the drift and dissolve of the second part, where the drugs kick in, Chas as Turner, Turner as Chas - but watch it turn on itself once again, the violence of a cut and rearranged body/space as Memo from Turner plays in one of the most glorious promo videos ever shot. Probably a perennial sort of debate about whose film it is, Cammell with his Chelsea sophistication, Bataille and Borges and transgression, or if Roeg is the greater auteur at work. For all the remarkably potent and cogent intellectual substance of the film, I think that the power in it resides more in the formal attire, the jagged rhythm and montage together with the camera’s slower and more questioning movements in the house, a schematic elaborated but never resolved in a conventional way. Militant and androgynous, androgynous yet militant - as the brilliant tagline from the original ad campaign had it. “James Fox. And James Fox. Mick Jagger. And Mick Jagger.”

[Dan Warburton]

Word. One of my all time faves. Funny you should mention Roeg, you rogue --



Nicolas Roeg, Puffball, 2007

A puffball is one of those football-sized mushrooms that are, apparently comestible but, well, I'll just have some bread & butter thanks. One of them, or some other hideous fungus, does get cooked up and mixed with sperm from a discarded condom (ewww as they say, but this is Roeg) and brewed into a potent love potion by ageing Irish witch (Rita Tushingham, once the waif darling of early 60s Brit new wave) to allow her daughter, also ageing (Miranda Richardson's put on a few pounds too) to conceive a fourth child. The old hag's evidently pissed off that a trendy young architect from across the Irish Sea has moved into the old family cottage (scene of earlier family tragedy etc haunted etc) and is determined to make her suffer. Add to that a field full of Norse voodoo, feritility stones with holes in them, and a geriatric Donald Sutherland who shows up to do little more than dig the vibes man, and you've got an entertaining if silly swansong from Roeg. Unless, like Fay Weldon who wrote the story and like the blokes from Coil, who supply one song to the decidely Wire-friendly soundtrack, you believe all this ley line dowser nonsense.

[Dan Warburton]

Sergio Sollima, Run Man Run, 1968

At last a really decent spaghetti western - more accurately a zapata western - with a coherent plot (if a well-worn one: various folks - greasy bandits, French mercenaries, a bounty killer and even the Salvation Army - all out to get their hands on a crock of revolutionary gold across the border in Texas) and a good cast. Tomas Milian reprises his role as knife-slinging Cuchillo from The Big Gundown, but this isn't a sequel as such. Very enjoyable.

[Dan Warburton]

John Ford, The Informer, 1935

It netted four Oscars, including one for Victor McLagen (who, when it comes to chewing scenery, makes Rod Steiger look like Dirk Bogarde's eyebrow), but the fact that the character he plays is nothing more than a drunken thug, combined with that awful mawkish "Irishness" that Ford probably invented single-handedly and some toe-curlingly hideous angelic choir reworkings of Irish folk music, not to mention the arms akimbo last minute repentance ending.. well, I was tempted to switch off on at least half a dozen occasions. Don't know how I made it to the end, but I won't be going back to find out why I did.

[Dan Warburton]

Ildikó Enyedi, My Twentieth Century,

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/o ... iko-enyedi Yes, whimsical's the word. I think Bradshaw's right to reference both Bergman and Kundera, but as I still haven't seen enough of the former and have never really seen the attraction of the latter, much of Enyedi's whimsy was rather lost on me - I can see why many people love it, though (and the donkey does indeed deserve an Oscar). Like Frank Capra, also referenced.

[Dan Warburton]

Henri Verneuil, Peur sur la ville, 1974

Though my fellow citizens of Her Britannic Majesty's United Kingdom would no doubt choke on their roast beef at the thought of a FROG playing him, I reckon Jean-Paul Belmondo would have made a pretty decent James Bond after Connery checked out. Better than Roger "foie gras" Moore, anyway. And he'd have saved Cubby Broccoli a few quid by doing his own stunts - though some of the antics he gets up to here look even too risky for him. Splendid thriller, cool two cop partnership with Charles Denner too, great Morricone soundtrack. Ask John Zorn.

[Dan Warburton]

Hugo Santiago, Invasión, 1969

When partners in crime, Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares pen a screenplay together, what is to be expected? Not a film that spare with words perhaps but who knows (writers tend to abstraction when they tackle cinema), Invasion is some sort of abstract spy movie chock-a-block with action : the body count is almost worthy of John Woo, car chases, explosions, and middle-aged heroes in black tuxedos looking conspiratorial and moody, stoic chess pawns, firing bullets, climbing walls or ladders, playing tango (once), and responding to the orders of a pensive old man, set against cruel, cynical youngsters wearing light-colored suits and raincoats. It is filmed in a highly contrasted black and white, which is beautiful, as is the editing which is a bit on the experimental side, which I love (think Resnais for that aspect of the film). As for the mysterious proceedings that occur with nary a dialogue, I was strangely reminded of the geometrical set-ups of Johnnie To, who share a similar proclivity for abstraction and the "show, don't tell" aesthetic that is paradoxically too lacking in films.

Got round to this one at last - yes, it's a real oddity, isn't it? You might be forgiven for expecting more memorable dialogue seeing who wrote it, and the fact that it can't decide whether it wants to be straight-up action or science-fiction could also frustrate some viewers (you mention Resnais, yes, sure, but Alphaville also comes to mind.. and Santiago worked with Bresson for seven years). But I loved it, and am looking forward to finding the time to see Santiago's Le ciel du centaure. His Le loup de la côte Ouest doesn't seem to be around over at KG, but I see there is a documentary on Maurice Blanchot.

[Dan Warburton]

Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, L'eau à la bouche, 1959

Shot in and around the Chateau d'Aubry in the Pyrénées, this early nouvelle vague outing remains solidly in the French tradition of Marivaux / Feydeau, a tale of flirtation / seduction / disguise / surprise which other Cahiers auteurs (Rohmer, Godard, Chabrol, et al.) were all to happy to perpetuate. Summoned to witness the reading of a will in their cousin Miléna's splendidly baroque castle (Doniol's DP Roger Fellous makes full use of the interior and exterior architecture in some really rather spectacular camera work), Séraphine turns up with her boyfriend Robert who for some reason best known to himself pretends to be her brother Jean-Paul, who arrives later on and screws everything up even further. Séraphine falls for the notary Miguel and Robert for Miléna, and if that wasn't enough the philandering maître d'hôtel César (Michel Galabru) can't keep his paws off the new housemaid Prudence (!) (played by Bernadette Lafont of course, and if you really believe her when she says she's still a virgin, well..). Add to this the title song of the same name by Gainsbourg - one of his best, I think - and a super smart new restored HD print and you can raise a glass of champagne in celebration. Nice.