Recently Watched Films 2016

[Dan Warburton]

Samuel Fuller, White Dog, 1982

Here's Paul Winfield again - not the dog, the actor, dummy - trying to untrain a seriously unbalanced pooch trained to attack blacks on sight. Splendid and unjustly neglected late Fuller, an adaptation of a novel by the perennially interesting Romain Gary'. Great cameo from Burl Ives too. Hats off to the animal trainers, honestly. Happy ending? The end of racism? Dream on, boyy http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/white-dog

[yonhosago]

The Big Short (McKay, 2015). You may not completely fathom what a credit default swap is when you leave, but you'll probably have a better idea than when you arrived. It's a little overwrought (especially Carrell) and ignores both some earlier similar crises (Like the Capital Asset Management bail-out) and the insurance vehicles provided by AIG that created the biggest gov't expenditures, but it's both enjoyable and informative. I'm a big Christian Bale fan so that may bias me a bit in its favor.

I liked it. It's the kind of movie Bertold Brecht (or the brechtian Billy Wilder) would have made (70 years ago). It's cruelty makes it better than Margin Call or Too big to fail, more to the point about what are the forces that produce a financial meltdown. Plus is funny, or at least I found Ryan Gosling funny with suntan and wig.

[walto]

The Quiet American (Mankiewicz, 1958)

This is the anti-commie version that the CIA helped write. Greene naturally hated it, and it's amazing that whatever righst to his novel were obtained allowed Mankiewicz to turn the plot upside-down. Michael Redgrave is over the top, and may have been encouraged to be as obno as possible, and Audie Murphy seems like he got off at the wrong bus stop on the way to a 1940s movie about college football: fortunately, all anybody wanted him to do was throw off the beaver jacket and start reading his lines the way Ronald Reagan would have. Still, the movie has its charms. Some of the Saigon scenes are like excellent documentary footage, and Claude Dauphin and Giorgia Moll are very engaging (even with Moll's presence being a result of the Hollywood practice in those days of giving non-asians the juicy asian roles (I'm thinking here particularly of (the wonderful) 'Bitter Tea of General Yen'). Richard Loo, who plays the communist who dupes Redgrave into believing the American is up to no good is also impressive: anybody would believe that guy.

A film professor might have a great time having their class read the novel and then following up by showing both this version and the 2002 (Noyce) take with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. Both releases resulted in political controversy, with Miramax attempting to suppress the second one. And both have beautiful Phuongs.

[Dan Warburton]

Michael Mann, The Jericho Mile, 1979

Early TV movie for Mr Mann, shot inside Folsom - and with the participation of its inmates, I believe - telling the story of a lifer who also happens to be able to run a four-minute mile.. sort of Chariots of Fire / yes-we-can-even-in-prison scenario. A rather good Wiki page for once https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jericho_Mile - funny though, we're so used to "bad language" these days the dialogue here comes across as rather tame. Nice work from MM though, deserved its five Emmys

[Dan Warburton]

Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight, 2015

Ah, so here it is, grandiosely-billed "The 8th Film of Quentin Tarantino" (which means that Kill Bill counts as one - hmm, hope he gets round to editing the two halves together one day).. Well, for a start, it's much better than Django Unchained, not that that's very surprising, with fine performances from QT regulars Jackson, Russell, Madsen and Roth (the less said about Zoe Bell's "acting" the better) as well as newcomers Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins and Demian Bachir. Plus Bruce Dern, who had a very small role in Django. But it's still about 20 minutes too long - we really don't need all those laboured "that's not Minnie's stew" lines - and basically goes over the same ground as Reservoir Dogs, the beer cellar in Basterds and the final diner standoff in Pulp Fiction. The Morricone soundtrack, with 50+ minutes actually written for the film instead of recycled from earlier scores (though there's a bit of that too), is smashing, and the blood, of which there's plenty, is very impressive. I wonder though how much of the $62m budget went into the actors' pockets - apart from a few nice scenes in the snow, we're stuck inside Minnie's Haberdashery all the time, and cabin fever does tend to set in after a while. I don't know why he opted for the Ultra Panavision either, since so few cinemas are likely to be equipped with the wherewithals to appreciate its nuances, but never mind. Was there an actual intermission when you guys saw it? There wasn't here - though I take it the logical place to put it would be before Chapter Five. Anyway, not bad - I'll happily buy the deeveedee when it comes out - but QT's treading water, and I hope his last two (since he's promised to stop at 10) will explore new ground. I rather doubt it, though.

[Dan Warburton]

Paul Verhoeven, Showgirls, 1995

Went back for a second dollop of trash'n'splash, but I can't see Gina Gershon's mouth anymore without imagining a chicken leg in it Yep, it's still fun - reminds me of De Palma's Scarface in its glitzy excesses, and the script is just about as awful - but I'm not sure it "richly rewards repeating viewing", as they say.

[Dan Warburton]

Justin Kurzel, Macbeth, 2015

How to sell Shakespeare to the Game of Thrones generation.. It looks great, with all those cool red filters and slowmotion battle scenes, but there's still the problem of the text: Macbeth is one of the harder Shakespeare plays to understand (my students here in France can get to grips with Lear and Hamlet without feeling they're being bogged down in a lost language, but there are whole swathes of "the Scottish play" that remain almost opaque, even to modern English speakers). To give the screenwriters credit, they did a good job cutting this one down to size a bit, but as a result Lady Macbeth's madness comes as something of a shock, and it's even harder than usual for us to identify with Macbeth himself. I have issues with the way some of the scenes are staged: the vision of Banquo's ghost, Lady M's "out damned spot" speech and even the great Macbeth soliloquy itself all seem to demand a more intimate setting. And I don't like the use of flashbacks - it isn't up to Mr Kurzel to tell us what Macbeth is thinking of: it imposes one reading of a text which has many. Nor do I think that "Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill" meant simply a rain of ashes from the aforementioned trees.. but, well, both Kurosawa and Peter Jackson already used moving trees to great effect, didn't they?

[Dan Warburton]

Roberto Minervini, Louisiana (The Other Side), 2015

Jesus, this was depressing. Is it a documentary (it seems that way, though the shot of the naked man in the undergrowth at the beginning had me wondering)? If so, how on earth did the director persuade these poor, broken souls to allow him and his cameras into the brutal intimacy of their trailer? How did Mark and Lisa really feel about fucking sweatily or shooting up on camera? Christ. As for the toothless old geezer who raps on about "fweedom" and then tips his grandson off his chair onto the ground for no reason at all - the poor child can only burst into tears - or the heavily pregnant pole dancer spiking her arm before going out to perform, or the flabby, mindless morons at the wet T-shirt party (EVERYONE in this film is drinking and smoking, all the time), not to mention the bimbo giving a blowjob in her Barack Obama mask, well, what can you say? Then we get the local goons, armed to the teeth, babbling on about the forthcoming revolution and the imposition of martial law, spouting trite clichés about "family" before shooting up a car as target practice.. And I thought the yokels in Southern Comfort were a scary bunch. Holy shit, Batman. Not for the fainthearted, this one. I wonder what the Louisiana Office of Tourism thought of it.

[Dan Warburton]

Wim Wenders / Juliano Ribiero Salgado, The Salt of the Earth, 2014

By way of accompaniment to this documentary on the life and work of Sebastiao Salgado, I can recommend Susan Sontag's New Yorker article from 2002 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/ ... ing-at-war - whether you consider Salgado's extraordinary shots of Rwandan genocide, Balkan refugees and burning Kuwaiti oilfields almost offensive in their terrible beauty or not, you can certainly see why he followed Voltaire's advice and began to "cultiver son jardin", replanting trees in the barren Minas Gerais (the film doesn't say so, but in fact some of the mining companies whose near-apocalyptic scenes Salgado photographed actually stumped up the cash to do this, maybe out of guilt?). A fine document(ary), though you may find some of Wim's heart-on-sleeve voiceovers a tad treacly

[Dan Warburton]

Corneliu Porumboiu, A fost sau n-a fost? ("12:08 East of Bucharest"), 2006

An extremely well-made, very funny (but with some serious overtones, of course) tale of a chat show on a crappy local TV station in Vaslui - a godforsaken hole somewhere near the Moldavian border, a kind of Romanian Rochdale - and how the locals "remember" the fall of Ceaucescu. Not that many of them were stone cold sober at the time

[Dan Warburton]

Nicolas Winding Refn, Bronson, 2008

Here's another one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Salvador - Tom Hardy's portrayal of Britain's most violent prisoner is scarily outstanding - I see it as a kind of sequel to Alan Clarke's Made in Britain: Trevor (Tim Roth) might have ended up like this.. Very well-made, great use of light and music, but could I sit through it again in the near future? I rather doubt it.. Meanwhile, if you want to shed a few pounds, here are a few tips from the man himself http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filt ... egime.html

[SqDanceCallingSteve]

Wim Wenders / Juliano Ribiero Salgado, The Salt of the Earth, 2014

By way of accompaniment to this documentary on the life and work of Sebastiao Salgado, I can recommend Susan Sontag's New Yorker article from 2002 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/ ... ing-at-war - whether you consider Salgado's extraordinary shots of Rwandan genocide, Balkan refugees and burning Kuwaiti oilfields almost offensive in their terrible beauty or not, you can certainly see why he followed Voltaire's advice and began to "cultiver son jardin", replanting trees in the barren Minas Gerais (the film doesn't say so, but in fact some of the mining companies whose near-apocalyptic scenes Salgado photographed actually stumped up the cash to do this, maybe out of guilt?). A fine document(ary), though you may find some of Wim's heart-on-sleeve voiceovers a tad treacly

Wonderful film! Breathtaking visuals and a great story.

[Alastair]

Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight, 2015

Was there an actual intermission when you guys saw it? There wasn't here - though I take it the logical place to put it would be before Chapter Five.

Yes there was, and yes just there, and an "overture" slide at the beginning of the film with a few minutes of the score played over it. We also got a picture-filled programme, which I"ll keep hanging around and then sell for tuppence on Ebay at some point. Australian-only! Woo! Get in line!

Something else that I hope was Australian-only was the giggles the first few times the n-word was used. Really? in 2016? At a Tarantino film? There was also laughter when Jennifer Jason Leigh got smacked around, which I wasn't particularly comfortable with, from an overwhelmingly male (and age 20-40) audience. I can see that the way she was hit was likely to be funny whether she'd been a man or a woman, but it's not something I'd be likely to laugh out loud at.

Without wanting to give away a plot point before other see it, how did you feel about the flashback to a previous meeting which is shown at the end of Chapter 5, Dan? I thought it a bit unnecessary.

On the whole I liked this less than "Django Unchained" and have no desire to see it again. And I love Westerns, quasi- or otherwise. And Walton Goggins.

[Dan Warburton]

Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight, 2015

Was there an actual intermission when you guys saw it? There wasn't here - though I take it the logical place to put it would be before Chapter Five.

Yes there was, and yes just there, and an "overture" slide at the beginning of the film with a few minutes of the score played over it. We also got a picture-filled programme, which I"ll keep hanging around and then sell for tuppence on Ebay at some point.

If it's the Roadshow Booklet you're talking about, someone already put it up on Karagarga. Doesn't say very much anyway.

Without wanting to give away a plot point before other see it, how did you feel about the flashback to a previous meeting which is shown at the end of Chapter 5, Dan? I thought it a bit unnecessary.

Do you mean the scene when John Ruth and Domergue arrive at Minnie's? If so, I disagree - I enjoyed seeing the same scene shot from a different angle. But again that's not new: you get that in Pulp Fiction when the Brett execution is reheard at the beginning of "The Bonnie Situation". If you're referring to something else, tell me. I checked with the H8 script I found online, but even the second version is different from the final movie. Curiously, QT refers to "coffy" throughout instead of "coffee" - presumably a homage to Pam Grier rather than an indication of an inability to spell

On the whole I liked this less than "Django Unchained" and have no desire to see it again.

Well, vive la différence. I won't be returning to Django, I think, but will give this one another shot when the DVD comes out.

[Piano Mouth]

I wasn't in the mood of a long brooding movie such as this (it seems) with the "payout" of a suspenseful shoot out at the end of the movie, so I walked out about 45 minutes into the movie. I was also really inebriated on Corona-Ritas (Corona plus margaritas). While I was definitely not in the mood for the movie, I was pretty happy from the drinks. Which consequently ended a friendship I once had it seemed with someone who is quite a prude. I would find a copy of this and download it from the internet, ticket having been paid already, but my internet service provider has been clamping down on downloads of mainstream movies so I'm at a loss. Maybe I'll go see it by myself in the theater. I like viewing movies on my own these days anyway. Cheers.

[Dan Warburton]

I wasn't in the mood of a long brooding movie such as this

This from a Rivette fan?

I was also really inebriated on Corona-Ritas (Corona plus margaritas).

Well, um, thanks for sharing that with us.. if it's of any interest to the assembled company, we finished off a bottle of Touraine Gamay and had a couple of slugs of single malt whisky trying to stay awake through



Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut, 1999

It's a shame Kubrick went out on such a pathetic note, and no amount of conspiracy-theory illuminati masonic horseshit "interpretations" can convince me otherwise. For a start, there's a world of difference between a pair of silver-spoon-in-mouth NY WASPs in the mid 90s and a couple of Viennese jews at the turn of the 20th century. All the Freudian energy of the Schnitzler short story has been airbrushed away (want to see a Schnitzler film? Try La Ronde), and sending a second unit team to gather three-second shots of Park Avenue and measure the distance between blue mailboxes doesn't make Kubrick's London look anything like New York. Cruise is simply appalling, with that pinched, forced grin lifted from Dustin Hoffman in scene one of Kramer vs Kramer (which, unlike EWS, happens to be a decent film about marital breakup/down), and if - Kidman - spoke - her - oh - so - meaningful - lines - any - slower - I'd - umm - zzzzzzzzzzz. Terrible music too, apart from the Shosta waltz. Thank goodness for the cheesy over-the-top cameos from Alan Cumming and Rade Serbedzija, aka Boris the Blade in Snatch, which is a hell of a sight more fun to watch and a much better film. And that "orgy" scene... haha, give me a fucking break. I defy anyone to get a hardon listening to organ music.

[Dan Warburton]

Satyajit Ray, Apur Sansar ("The World of Apu"), 1959

I read somewhere that several reels of film were lost somewhere along the way, which might explain a couple of rather surprising leaps - unless I'm mistaken we're not told Aparna is pregnant until we learn she's died in childbirth, for example - but these are piddling criticisms of a mighty piece of work. Truffaut may have walked out of the first episode of the trilogy, but (according to Wiki) Godard liked this one. I think bits of it pop up in the Histoire(s) - but then again, bits of everything pop up in the Histoire(s)

[walto]

I wasn't in the mood of a long brooding movie such as this

This from a Rivette fan?

I was also really inebriated on Corona-Ritas (Corona plus margaritas).

Well, um, thanks for sharing that with us.. if it's of any interest to the assembled company, we finished off a bottle of Touraine Gamay and had a couple of slugs of single malt whisky trying to stay awake through



Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut, 1999

It's a shame Kubrick went out on such a pathetic note, and no amount of conspiracy-theory illuminati masonic horseshit "interpretations" can convince me otherwise. For a start, there's a world of difference between a pair of silver-spoon-in-mouth NY WASPs in the mid 90s and a couple of Viennese jews at the turn of the 20th century. All the Freudian energy of the Schnitzler short story has been airbrushed away (want to see a Schnitzler film? Try La Ronde), and sending a second unit team to gather three-second shots of Park Avenue and measure the distance between blue mailboxes doesn't make Kubrick's London look anything like New York. Cruise is simply appalling, with that pinched, forced grin lifted from Dustin Hoffman in scene one of Kramer vs Kramer (which, unlike EWS, happens to be a decent film about marital breakup/down), and if - Kidman - spoke - her - oh - so - meaningful - lines - any - slower - I'd - umm - zzzzzzzzzzz. Terrible music too, apart from the Shosta waltz. Thank goodness for the cheesy over-the-top cameos from Alan Cumming and Rade Serbedzija, aka Boris the Blade in Snatch, which is a hell of a sight more fun to watch and a much better film. And that "orgy" scene... haha, give me a fucking break. I defy anyone to get a hardon listening to organ music.

Totally agree, except I remember kind of liking the music. But maybe it was just the waltz you mentioned? IIRC, the best stuff occurred during some silly, boring ritual. Was that the "Shosta waltz"?

[Dan Warburton]

Joseph Newman, This Island Earth, 1955

No, not Mars Attacks. Opinions seem quite divided on the merits of this gaudy slab of processed cheese - there's much to admire in the sets and make-up department (though how our heroes, who are supposed to be perceptive scientists, didn't peg Exeter and Brack as aliens after taking one look at that forehead, let alone the hairstyle), but the acting is lamentable, probably because the dialogue is. I can't remember why I downloaded this - thank goodness I didn't buy it haha - maybe because Susan Sontag mentioned it somewhere? Who knows. Anyway, not my favourite 50s sci-fi.

[Dan Warburton]

I remember kind of liking the music. But maybe it was just the waltz you mentioned? IIRC, the best stuff occurred during some silly, boring ritual. Was that the "Shosta waltz"?

Nah, the Shostakovich waltz, from the "Jazz Suite" (1925), is the title music. There are one or two nice bits of Ligeti and Liszt ("Nuages gris"), but I'm not much of a Victor Sylvester fan, and I certainly don't like Chris Isaak. The music for the "silly boring ritual" - yes, it's not really my idea of an orgy either - is by Jocelyn Pook. But unlike you, I don't care for it at all.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/soundtrack