Recently Watched Films 2018

[Dan Warburton]

Abel Ferrara, Dangerous Game (aka "Snake Eyes"), 1993

This was royally trashed by Madonna fans and film critics alike, but I found it remarkably engaging - and I'm not the world's biggest Ferrara fan. Keitel is predictably good (assuming you like Keitel), and brings some of that Bad Lieutenant angst to the role of the unstable movie director. (Yes, it's a film about a film.. or rather a film within a film about a film..) James Russo is impressively vicious, and Madonna is, I find, surprisingly effective. The jittery handheld closeup photography (is this the closest Abel has come to Cassavetes?) and the obstinate and deliberately confusing montage - guess where Ferrara's film ends and Eddie Israel's begins - are perfectly adapted to the emotional rollercoaster material. If it had been signed by a European art director, I'll bet you it would be at 62% on the Tomatometer instead of its (totally unwarranted) 31%. But who cares a toss about ratings?

[Dan Warburton]

the Joseph Conrad short story The Return damned if I can find it in print somewhere, no luck as yet - Dan, do you know?.

Is this it?
http://www.online-literature.com/conrad/185/

[henriq]

the Joseph Conrad short story The Return damned if I can find it in print somewhere, no luck as yet - Dan, do you know?.

Is this it?
http://www.online-literature.com/conrad/185/

Yes of course, beautiful! I didn't even consider online resources. Cheers!

[henriq]

Agree with all the above - what struck me rather forcibly was.. the birdsong... and the gorgeous countryside (I haven't had time to watch all the YouTube bonus docu interview with author A.F.N. Clarke yet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agkue5JQwjQ but apparently the film was shot, for obvious security reasons, in Wales). And as the Irish border is once again in the news, for different reasons, all the more reason for you to check out this terrific work. One wonders what Clarke would have done if he'd lived long enough to make that Hollywood film he was planning when he was diagnosed with cancer.

Absolute magic in one scene, when they're checking the derelict houses and the old couple appear. Guns cocked in complete silence for what feels like minutes - watched it again and clocked it, and of course we are talking seconds. Recall this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYbQRPxI9Z0. Time becomes dense in this cinematic durée, which is just astounding.

[henriq]

Abel Ferrara, Dangerous Game (aka "Snake Eyes"), 1993

This was royally trashed by Madonna fans and film critics alike, but I found it remarkably engaging - and I'm not the world's biggest Ferrara fan. Keitel is predictably good (assuming you like Keitel), and brings some of that Bad Lieutenant angst to the role of the unstable movie director. (Yes, it's a film about a film.. or rather a film within a film about a film..) James Russo is impressively vicious, and Madonna is, I find, surprisingly effective. The jittery handheld closeup photography (is this the closest Abel has come to Cassavetes?) and the obstinate and deliberately confusing montage - guess where Ferrara's film ends and Eddie Israel's begins - are perfectly adapted to the emotional rollercoaster material. If it had been signed by a European art director, I'll bet you it would be at 62% on the Tomatometer instead of its (totally unwarranted) 31%. But who cares a toss about ratings?

Yes, a great Ferrara. Love the contrasting day and night shots of Los Angeles, gleaming with neon at night and dirty, smoggy and emaciated in the morning. Also the pitch and wail of Keitel's forlorn singing, beautiful.

James Russo, yes! No one does scowl like him. A great supporting player: check him out in Donnie Brasco and realise that while Superstars Pacino And Depp chew the meat, bone, blood, cud and fat out of every scene (you wouldn't think there is that much to chew, and you'd be right - watch out for the dreadful Director's Cut, so-called), Russo is there not doing much, covering the street, sounding out the depth of every scene.

How does Rotten Tomato work, that's from the critics, right? So not quite as inane or trolled as the IMDB commentariat. Still, critics might be wrong now and again

[henriq]

Ridley Scott - Black Rain (1989)

Inscrutable East?

Try: Irredemable pile of toxic racist manure. Pity I couldn't find a screenshot of Andy Garcia getting decapitated, the only, and massively, satisfying moment in this crapfest. A pox on Ridley Scott. Oh yes, and Hans Zimmer dribbles with some shakuhachi patches all over the place. Awful, stay away (duh...)

[Steve Minkin]

THE OUTSIDER -- THE STORY OF HARRY PARTCH (2002)

Thoroughly fascinating hour-long BBC documentary on NorCal's maverick composer, with Lou Harrison, Phillip Glass, and lots of Harry Himself. Available on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKD3zm0WZjA



BONUS TRACKS

CLOUD CHAMBER MUSIC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyO2PRoamFs

THE LETTER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDl5X70GkbA

[walto]

I thought his house was amazing.

[Alastair]

Alone in Berlin (Perez, 2016)

I enjoyed the book (bit of a Fallada freak). Pity to hear the film is not great.

[Dan Warburton]

Basil Dearden, The League of Gentlemen, 1960

Not, alas, Robert Fripp's short-lived postpunk band with Danielle "Lemon Kittens" Dax and Barry "XTC" Andrews, but a jolly good British heist caper, with gentleman Jack Hawkins emerging from a manhole in full evening dress to take off in his Rolls to recruit a bunch of former soldiers (he makes them an offer they can't refuse, if you get my drift) to rob a bank. Eventually.. The preparations for the job take up nearly two thirds of the film, and the dénouement - of course, they don't get away with it - is rather rushed, but there are some great character performances from Roger Livesey, Dickie Attenborough et al..

[Dan Warburton]

Takashi Miike, Shinjuku Triad Society, 1995

Yikes, Miike kickstarted his career in style with two anal rapes, one gouged-out eye, one jugular vein sliced with broken bottle, a hero (well, not really, there aren't any) police officer smashing a girl in the face with a chair.. Way to go! Actually, gore aside, it's a straightforward yakuza flick - and a rather good one too. Looking forward to the next two parts of the trilogy.. but maybe not for a few days

[henriq]

Takashi Miike, Shinjuku Triad Society, 1995

Yikes, Miike kickstarted his career in style with two anal rapes, one gouged-out eye, one jugular vein sliced with broken bottle, a hero (well, not really, there aren't any) police officer smashing a girl in the face with a chair.. Way to go! Actually, gore aside, it's a straightforward yakuza flick - and a rather good one too. Looking forward to the next two parts of the trilogy.. but maybe not for a few days

You should, I found the whole thing quite moving. Possible that I watched it still reeling from my own visit to Japan, but there are beautiful melancholic nuances to the movies. Ley Lines is great!

[Dan Warburton]

Peter Watkins, La Commune (Paris, 1871), 2000

Finally got round to seeing this, and wish I had done so years ago - extraordinary, all six hours of it. As usual, JR says it better than I could https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2002/ ... televised/ but if you don't know anything about La Commune (I didn't, and many French still don't) and why it was both so important for subsequent world history (read Lenin..) and at the same time doomed to fail, you need to see this. But Watkins' net is cast wider than that: working with non-professionals in an improvised set in Armand Gatti's rehearsal space in Montreuil, his film has as much to say about man and media in 2018 as it does a brief, tempestuous experiment in revolutionary politics in 1871. Masterpiece.

[Steve Minkin]

MARK TWAIN -- Ken Burns, 2001

I'm not a Ken Burns fan. I liked his Civil War series, although I had some bones to pick with it. I thought his Baseball was lifeless and boring, bailed early. I thought his Jazz was demented. I liked the opening of his Vietnam, he did a good job on the backhistory with the French and the close of WWII as it related to the region, but it soon got so scattered I couldn't stay engaged.

BUT, his short (2-parts, 2-hours each) series on Mark Twain was superb -- engrossing, informative, and emotionally compelling both on the incredible success of Mark Twain's career and the heartbreaking tragedies of Samuel Clemens' later life. Wonderful archival photography throughout, and since he did so much traveling with his lecture tours quite a lot of the country and the globe is featured. An unexpected joy, and a impetus to reread Huckleberry Finn for the first time in 60 years.

[henriq]

Don Siegel - Dirty Harry (1971)

So, watched this again and enjoyed it immensely. San Francisco has probably never looked as beautiful, the pace is brilliant, sleek and hesitant. The action scenes, when they slowly emerge and erupt, are kinetic and brittle, explosive and beautiful. Everything moves as in a haze, a haze which pervades and in a way questions the supposed politics of the film. Funny - and I'm probably overstating the case, born as I am eight years after this was released - that this film sort of filters through history as a sort of fascist tract, morally dubious at best. (For the best of this, check out J. Hoberman's magisterial The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties). There is truth to this: Andy Robinson's Scorpio is coded hippie with his long hair and peace sign belt buckle, a bit androgynous and queer with those big lips and girly bemused eyes. But compare this to a movie like Aldrich's Dirty Dozen, a movie that has always been cool to like, and something becomes glaringly wrong with mainstream movie culture. The uneaxamined politics of that one, the America - Fuck Yeah! expediency of taking a bunch of murderers and rapists, train them (and procure the necessary prostitute retinue to keep them lubed and happy) and send them of to kill a bunch of nazis. Or send them to Southeast Asia, or Iraq whydontcha - see how easy it is to transpose the tonalities of DD to any number of military theaters and the unquestioned, gleeful machismo becomes distinctly unpleasant. Harry Callahan, meanwhile, is wistful while macho, riddled with doubt and regret. Recall the great scene with Harry and Reni Santoni's wife leaving the hospital - Why do you stay in this? I don't know, I really don't - and the ambiguities become as sharp as his suit. There are probably reams of stuff waiting to be written on Clint Eastwood and the fissures within the conservative male code, and this is my little contribution to it.

[Dan Warburton]

I take it you're familiar with Pauline Kael's review of this - if not, here 't is https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/12/2 ... line-kael/ Interested you chose to compare it to Dirty Dozen (and is it, as you say, really "cool to like" that one? Dunno, but I seem to recall it caught a lot of flak at the time too..), instead of, say, Death Wish. What do you make of the later Harry films? "Wistful" isn't the adjective that comes to mind though I see what you mean. I like this film very much too, and as Kael's review makes clear, the SF locations are a big part of that. I should check out the Hoberman you mentioned. Anyway, talking of morally dubious revenge, this




Barry Shear, The Deadly Trackers, 1973

was a disappointment, especially after Shear's magnificent Across 110th Street. But maybe it wasn't his fault - Sam Fuller, who wrote the story it seems, was pulled out of the director's chair by disgruntled WB execs (shame - he wanted to cast Juliet Berto!) and Shear ended up with the job. But it's an odd one, starting with the casting - Rod Taylor makes for a very nasty villain, for a change, but it's hard to take Al Lettieri as a good guy Mexican sheriff and the ending of the film, which I find deeply problematic - why one earth would he just shoot another lawman in the back, after going out of his way to respect correct police procedure throughout the movie? just doesn't make sense. Richard Harris's transition from thou shalt not kill no shooting sheriff into bloodthirsty avenger - some of the violence he gets into is apocalyptic: check out when he throw Lettieri through the window and takes out Jacob - is understandable under the circumstances but not sufficiently backed up by context: it's as if the director just couldn't be bothered, backstory be damned, let's cut to the chase. Similarly with Jacob - what was this apparently well-educated black guy doing with a gang of cutthroats who frequently abuse him (lock up your children, THEY USE THE N WORD.. horreurs!)? Landscape magnificent, acting good, pace uneven, conclusion unsatisfying. But worth a watch if you like the genre.

[Dan Warburton]

Julien Duvivier, Au bonheur des dames, 1930

Silent film purists always bemoan how unadventurous cinema became once sound - more specifically spoken dialogue to eludicate plot development and character - was added, and watching the spectacular montage accompanying the uncle's descent into madness proves the point. Zola would, I suspect, have loved it: I've always maintained that, had he been born a century or so later, he'd have been a TV director par excellence. If you liked Breaking Bad, you'd love L'assommoir, imo. Great story, splendid archive footage of the Galeries Lafayette as they were in 1930 (not that they've changed much since). The ending's a bit of a cop out, but it was in the book too.

[Dan Warburton]

Hilmar Oddsson, The Beast, 1986

This doesn't deserve its 5.1 IMDb rating - probably because of the 27 people who rated it I'd guess barely half a dozen watched it to its conclusion, not helped by a lousy image quality (not available on DVD and the KG rip is pretty ropy) - the story of a young couple who return to the remote fjords of Eastern Iceland (he ostensibly to work on a book, but in reality to confront the demons that wrecked his parents' marriage and with it his childhood, she to practice her flute for a forthcoming music exam) inevitably recalls both Straw Dogs and The Shining. Of course, it's not on that level, and the ending is indeed confusing, but it's not without interest and deserves a better fate.

[Dan Warburton]

Bill Forsyth, Local Hero, 1983

I wonder how many days and nights (and how many tubes of Highland midge repellent) the crew had to endure to catch fine weather on the coasts of Scotland to film this tale of a young Texan oil executive sent to buy off the local inhabitants to build an enormous refinery. It's not without its charms - Burt Lancaster as Happer, the eccentric CEO whose only interest in life is to discover a comet (his wish later came true when an asteroid was named after the character), turns in a good performance, and there's more than a wee dram of Whisky Galore-like Scottish whimsy, and it all ends happily ever after, sure - but I'm not sure it's as great as Roger Ebert and a whole distillery full of Rotten Tomatoes critics found it. That bloody Mark Knopfler title tune will get stuck in your head, whether you like it or not.

[Dan Warburton]

Elio Petri, L'assassino, 1961

Excellent debut feature from Petri, with Marcello Mastroianni perfectly cast as the cynical antiques dealer taken into custody for a crime he didn't commit (or did he? not spoiling it for you..). Kafka à l'italienne, classy.