Recently Watched Films 2016

[Dan Warburton]

Eric Rohmer, Le beau mariage, 1982

I'm three quarters of the way through Antoine de Baecque's monster biography of Rohmer (a very interesting read, though I don't think it's been translated into English yet), and decided to revisit one of the first Rohmers I ever saw, way back when. Let's just say that if you like Rohmer, you'll like this - but see below - but if you don't, you'll absolutely hate it. Béatrice Romand's Sabine will drive you crazy. There's a serious, even mildly disturbing, undertow to this apparently naïve photo-roman, and André Dussollier's tight, almost wincing, smile sums up the feel of the film perfectly. As ever, Rohmer is the invisible master, his scripts tailor-made for his actors (often incorporating the expressions they use in everyday conversation - the wily old fox would invite his players to his offices to chew the fat over innumerable cups of tea and record everything on a cassette player), the choice of colours and costumes and the editing so subtle and well-prepared you don't even notice them. If you're a Rohmer fan, try this one again - but if not, start with another one, for goodness' sake.

[Dan Warburton]

Ben Wheatley, High-Rise, 2015

I couldn't let Jeremy Irons get away with a lacklustre performance (see previous page), and am happy to report he's superb here as Anthony Royal, the man at the top of JG Ballard's nightmarish 40-storey tower block. Nicolas Roeg had expressed an interest in bringing Ballard's novel to screen back in the 70s (when it was, apparently, Ian Curtis's favourite bedtime read), but we've had to wait until now. Ballard was rather good at predicting some of the nastier things that came to pass in the 80s and beyond, so it's fitting, in a way, that Ben Wheatley has chosen to go out with a Thatcher soundbite (followed by The Fall's "Industrial Estate"). There's the same cold, vicious irony in Greenaway's early 80s films - indeed, Ann Royal's costume party looks remarkably like something out of The Draughtsman's Contract - not one of the main characters is genuinely likeable, especially the main protagonist Laing (played very well by Tom Hiddleston), and the director and his screenwriter Amy Jump have wisely chosen to stick close to the original. And of course, with a story that descends into extreme violence, it's a filmmaker's dream. The Clint Mansell soundtrack's cool too, but the real scoop for Wheatley was getting Portishead to cover Abba's "S.O.S." - and it's a cracking version too, even if, frustratingly, it's not on the soundtrack album or available online (though you can convert the YouTube video into mp3, but I suspect you may get some of Cosgrove's dialogue with it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID4tWZ4_iK0

[SqDanceCallingSteve]

THE NICE GUYS (2016) -- My wife loved it, our daughter liked it, I thought it was an unfunny, dreary bore. Dinner beforehand was great! http://flavorbistro.com/

[Piano Mouth]

Well I saw Clean and Irma Vep recently and I liked them both a lot together. I think both make for a good viewing as a pair but they also both stick out on their own. [HOT BEVERAGE]️

[walto]

Anomalisa (Kaufman, 2015). There's a lot of Kafka here, although instead of being on trial, the protagonist is on the run from all the nearly identical masses who seem to be in love with him. He wants someone to sound or look different from everybody else, but when someone finally does, and he has sex with her, she starts morphing into the sameness that's driving him crazy. The animation seems to me original, but it's not really pleasant to watch, and not only because of the downer plot and somewhat unsympathetic protagonist. It's too narrowly focused (or something like that). The main character is always on screen and we hear mostly his voice and that of the guy who does everybody else. The other characters all look the same too--except for their hair. So it's very claustrophobic. And watching a long sex scene between dolls isn't really my thing.

[Dan Warburton]

Zhao Liang, Behemoth, 2015

As with Herzog's Lessons of Darkness, I suspect some people will criticise the director for the sheer beauty of the terrible devastation he films (for more info, I'll hand you over to the NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/world ... emoth.html), but I can't recommend this highly enough.

[Dan Warburton]

Bruno Dumont, Ma Loute, 2016

I have to go pretty far back to think of a film I disliked as much as this - I can only assume that Bruno Dumont, whose work I've appreciated enormously so far (without exception, though the Camille Claudel film was a tough one) has really set out to piss off everybody. His misanthropy knows no bounds - and I speak as someone who loves black comedies - everyone in this film is ridiculed, upper and lower classes alike, police, clergy, but not only that: it's as if, in trying to make a funny film (I should have suspected that right away and stayed at home), Dumont has also deliberately set out to take the piss out of (the expression isn't strong enough) the entire history of film comedy, taking time-honoured tropes of movie humour from Mack Sennett slapstick via Laurel and Hardy (the fat cop and his thin sidekick) to The Party (the trumpet melody that never ends) and redoing them in a way that is absolutely not funny. The stupid Mary Poppins flying scenes seem to be taking the piss out of his own movies, particularly the much-discussed levitation scene in L'humanité. An exercise in subversion? Who knows.. but he's also insulting his actors - famous names (Luchini, Binoche..) and amateurs alike - and every poor fucker who goes to see the film. It's a two-hour suicide note - BUT reading some of the largely positive reviews this mess has received so far, maybe I'm wrong. I'd thought until now that he chose to cast unattractive (fuck that, lets' call a spade a spade, these guys are UGLY) non-professionals to reveal some sort of redeeming human qualities. Now I'm not sure he doesn't really think all human beings are truly brutti sporchi e cattivi. I really can't believe how much I hated this film.

[Dan Warburton]

Rudolph Maté, Union Station, 1950

This one was featured in Thom Andersen's excellent Los Angeles Plays Itself (see above), though in the movie Los Angeles is never explicitly named as the city in which the action is taking place. And most of that action does indeed take place in the abovementioned station, where William Holden's hardboiled cop ("Don't call me Willy") rules the roost. But the stampede above is a great moment. Nice, compact little noir, good for a rainy afternoon.

[Dan Warburton]

Jee-woon Kim, The Good, The Bad, The Weird, 2008

An outrageously flashy but very enjoyable guksu remake of the Leone classic set in 1940s Manchuria. Forget that maudlin Civil War episode that slows down the earlier film and cut to the chase

[Dan Warburton]

Bruno VeSota, The Brain Eaters, 1958

Imagine an Ed Wood remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with cuddly little black furballs with long pointy white fangs (probably pipe cleaners) instead of the pods, and you're not far off. A mysterious cone made of some kind of metal unknown to man appears in rural Illinois (though it doesn't look like Illinois to me), and the local resident handsome young boffin - yep, a pipe smoker too - crawls inside and finds nothing. But when he goes back later on he finds a God-like figure (you will not believe the white beard: come back Santa all is forgiven) and about a zillion of the furball parasites, which apparently are not from outer space but have been biding their time underground for the past 200 million years, and which for some reason live in luminescent goldfish bowls.. Well, what can one say.. it's not exactly Ed Wood-bad (if it were, it might be more enjoyable) but it's certainly not good enough to warrant a return visit.

[Dan Warburton]

Alfred Hitchcock, The Wrong Man, 1956

Ah, at last a decent film! Maybe even a great one - but certainly something of an oddity in the Hitchcock canon as it tells (as opposed to simply being based on) a true story, filmed in the real locations with many of the real protagonists, and isn't the slightest bit funny. Fonda is magnificent, managing to look guilty for a crime he didn't commit in the first place, and Vera Miles' descent into mental illness is worthy of Jean Seberg in Rossen's Lilith a few years later. Herrmann's score is grating and minimal, taking small motives and grinding them into submission, which is what the cops do to Manny. Even the happy ending, which arrives about as fast as the express train in the final seconds of North by Northwest, leaves you feeling disoriented and vulnerable. Vertigo isn't far away.

[Dan Warburton]

Eric Rohmer, L'anglaise et le Duc, 2001

I rather doubt whether anyone, even two hundred years ago when the air was purer, would be able to make out the colours of soldiers' uniforms in central Paris from the hills of Meudon 12 km to the south-west looking through the kind of telescope that was available at the time. But, as Rohmer researched this adaptation of the memoirs of Grace Elliott with an almost insane eye for detail (even going so far as to determine the exact place in the sky of the moon on the evening of the dates mentioned), I may be wrong. It's an odd film in the Rohmer canon, not because it's a historical film - there's already La Marquise d'O and Perceval le Gallois, after all - but because it cost what for the normally frugal director must have seemed an astronomical sum of some 40 million francs. Most of that went on the digital inlay work: unable to find any streets in or around Paris that had remained unchanged since the Revolution, Rohmer commissioned large paintings (closely based on originals to be found in the city's museums) and was able to film his characters in the studio and give the impression they were indeed walking in a three-dimensional space. Except it's clearly a three-dimensional painting. Only 17 of the 124 minutes of the film are "exteriors" - the vast majority of the dialogue (and this is Rohmer, so expect dialogue, not action) takes place inside. But, in a manner analogous to the stylised exteriors, Rohmer's decorator makes systematic use of trompe-l'oeil, and soundwise we're clearly in a studio set rather than a plush, velvety hôtel particulier (indeed, there are some very strange acoustics at times - it sounds like the boom operator is well away from the action on occasions, which reminds me of Rivette's Religieuse, though I doubt there was any deliberate homage on Rohmer's part). That said, the interior decorating, like the costumes, is scrupulously respectful of the period: paintings, furniture, clocks and other accessories were chosen precisely because they dated from the early 1790s (and not the late 1780s!). As for the story of the British expat (an intriguing one: not only was she a former mistress of the Prince of Wales and the Duc d'Orleans, but there was later talk of a liaison with Bonaparte - not surprisingly, rumours abound she was a spy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Elliott), it's clear that Rohmer's sympathies lie very much with the deposed monarchy: the Jacobins are presented either as bores or boors, while Marie Antoinette (whom we don't see in the film, of course) is praised to the skies. But as usual, there are two sides to every story - and I'd have preferred more shit in the streets instead of those sparkling cobblestones. Paris and its inhabitants at the time of the Revolution must have stunk to high heaven. Still, if you're interested in the period - and everyone should be, imo - you might want to check out this film.

[Dan Warburton]

Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight, 2015

It's much better on the big screen, for a start. The interiors of Minnie's look dark and dusty on the DVD, but the shorter cut is more convincing (actually, as I don't recall seeing one of the scenes Alastair commented on in an earlier post on this thread, I think the version I saw at the cinema wasn't the extended roadshow cut either). Second time round then, and I found much to enjoy, despite some of the reservations I made earlier about the film's longueurs still applying. It's nice to study the reactions of the characters knowing how the story ends, and that only confirms QT's choice of actors, all of whom do a great job. (Not the minor roles, but I said that last time too.) It's still not near the top of my favourite QT films - see other thread - but it ain't shabby.

[walto]

The Intern (Meyers, 2015)

It's nothing special, a kind of inverted Devil Wears Prada, and it's hard (at least for me) to watch De Niro anymore. But I thought it was unusual in having no meanie in it. There are a bunch of interns and employees at Hathaway's successful start-up, and everyone is nice. Nobody is even mildly annoying. The Hathaway character is supposed to be "difficult," but she isn't really. Her house husband (Anders Holm--one of the two Workaholics alums here) is having an affair, but even he's forgiven, because he's sorry...and he's so goddam nice! Hard to imagine a movie going for two hours with every single character being likeable, but it's not (excessively) boring. And, of course, being a Meyers movie, every building in Brooklyn is more than just nice, it's gorgeous. It's not exactly uplifting, but it's not terribly cloying either somehow, in spite of the affability of every person in it, and the "Uncle Charlie" aspect of De Niro (only without the sting). It's as if an older version of the Carl Betz character on The Donna Reed show was what they were shooting for. As it's the post-2000 De Niro, there's a lot more mugging, though.

[jon abbey]

that Workaholics show is so awful, and I am super tolerant of TV comedies.

[Dan Warburton]

Raoul Ruiz, Shattered Image, 1998

Of course, most of the IMDb punters, seeing Anne Parillaud, thought they were getting another Nikita, and had a nasty shock - hence the 4.9 rating, which is definitely not deserved. Sure, it's not Ruiz's finest work, probably because he had to explain his working method to a bunch of Hollywood techies who must have thought he was out of his mind - he mentions a few things here (scroll down) http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2002/0 ... rosenbaum/ - and I read one review (would like to know where the information comes from) that said the producers mucked around with the ending, to make it more, erm, comprehensible. Comprehensible, this guy? Ha! The story of Jess and her dream double is vintage Ruiz - of course, each character seems to be dreaming the other, and events and characters from the two stories intersect and loop back and forth - and even if the script is lame (though I suspect the director didn't mind this at all) and he (had to?) cast by far the least talented of the Baldwin brothers, Robby Muller's camerawork is elegant and the Jorge Arriagarda score smashing. Don't expect a straightforward neo-noir: this is closer to Lynch, with a nod to other flawed erotic thrillers (Cammell's Wild Side, Rafelson's Black Widow). It's a hell of sight more interesting than Nikita, too.

[Dan Warburton]

Russ Meyer, Common Law Cabin, 1967

There's a PhD thesis waiting to be written on Russ Meyer movies, and this - more so perhaps than the (admittedly much better) Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or the (admittedly much better-made and well-budgeted) Beyond The Valley of the Dolls - would be a prime slab of Meyer mythology (à la Barthes) to analyse, from the faux-hardboiled sub-Chandler script to the amazingly unsexy scenes with what should be - assuming you share Mr Meyer's enthusiasm for the female form, or the upper half of it - amazingly sexy women. The fact that the men are all total failures should send dozens of nerdy filmschool types scurrying into the college library for their sperm-stained copies of Freud (major league tenure-track cool points to be scored there, methinks); but if you don't feel like exploring the Lacanian pretentious whatnots, how about the actual film technique? Reams have been written on the wonders of totally inept cinematography when practised by the likes of Warhol and Morrissey (or, to prove I'm not taking the European high ground here) Moullet - I reckon some of the shots in Common Law Cabin deserve as much attention. This guy was a UFO of a filmmaker, make no mistake. Jawdropping stuff.

[Dan Warburton]

Luc Moullet, Genèse d'un repas, 1978

Sitting down to a frugal dinner consisting of a can of tuna, an omelette and a banana (!), the inimitable Moullet is led to wonder why, despite the image of a jolly Breton fisherman on the tin, the fish inside actually hails from Dakar, and sets out on a journey to document the absurdity and injustice of the global post-colonial economy (and though it was made nearly 40 years ago, it's just as relevant to our world today) which takes him to the slums of Ecuador and the miseries of Senegal, and eventually to the realisation that he - and all of us - are just as guilty as everyone else. Magnificent, distressing but also very funny. Echt Moullet. Practise yr French: http://revueperiode.net/genese-dun-repa ... e-de-thon/

[Dan Warburton]

Alex Winter, Deep Web, 2015

It'd be much better if there wasn't the constant background music - why do so many documentaries insist on this? there must be some semiological explanation - and I could have done without Keanu Reeves as a narrator, but apart from that it's a well-researched piece of work. Given the way the world is going though, I'm afraid Ross Ulbricht will be sitting in jail for some time to come.

[Dan Warburton]

Michael Radford, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1984

I didn't look to see whether the version we saw had a dual audio track allowing access to the Eurythmics soundtrack, which the director objected to having foisted upon him by Big Brother Branson, but I'm not sure I'm in a hurry to return to it to check it out. Not that the film isn't good - it's very well made, with stellar performances from Richard Burton (his last) and John Hurt - but it looks as bleak as the events it describes.