Recently Watched Films

[cheerios]

ooh I heard that movie was really scary!

Wonder Boys (2000)



At first I was like what is this crap? But then I started to like it a little bit more after the scene with Michael Douglas and Tobey McGuire at the restaurant. There were some pretty annoying *smirk smirk* wasn't that witty and funny scenes in the movie though. Though it kind of makes me want to enroll in a MFA program again.

[Jesse]

His Girl Friday
D: Howard Hawks [1940]


In A Lonely Place
D: Nicholas Ray [1950]

How is it Ray is not integrated into the endless lists and best-of hierarchies made of the great American film-makers?

[Dan Warburton]

How is it Ray is not integrated into the endless lists and best-of hierarchies made of the great American film-makers?

He's pretty big here in old Europe, and has been ever since the days of Godard and has Cahiers pals.

[Jesse]

This Is What Democracy Looks Like [2000]

First viewing of this doc about the WTO/Seattle actions in November, 1999.
The events there, the coordination of state powers and the results [on a larger scale] were remarkably familiar to me from my experience at the RNC in September 2008. Those events [including footage of my getting gassed] are available for free with this doc:

http://www.terrorizingdissent.org/

Good times!

[Jesse]

[leroysghost]

Robert Aldrich - Attack! (1956)
stagy and ridiculously over acted message movie padded with excellent direction from Aldrich, nice cinematography from Joseph Biroc (Forty Guns) and good production design from a crew who really knew how to make the best of a small budget. Lee Marvin is the only one who is bearable here acting wise, though Jack Palance manages a pretty great death mask (see above). watching him lie around with that look on his face for the entire last act of the film while everyone around him acts so seriously is pretty much the only moment of true enjoyment in a movie desperately in need of a good laugh.


Robert Aldrich - Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

a stupid and uninteresting retread of the great What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Olivia de Havilland is just awful (soooo annoying) and Agnes Moorehead might be the worst actress ever to land sizable film roles.

[Dan Warburton]

Yes, why on earth he wanted to redo Baby Jane is beyond me. (And Olivia is always pretty awful..) Meanwhile, the other one you mention looks kind of interesting, LG.

[leroysghost]

Yes, why on earth he wanted to redo Baby Jane is beyond me.

sweet cash (and seven Academy Award nominations)

Meanwhile, the other one you mention looks kind of interesting, LG.

it kind of was, probably just because the central plot was so bad that i spent the entire film paying extra special attention to the details. i suppose if one loved over the top performances and went in with low expectations they might get something out of it.

[leroysghost]

Mervyn LeRoy - The Bad Seed (1956)
after a night of limp over the topness and bad camp, i had to go back and see such things done right
it's interesting how a lame director like LeRoy can produce something this great after a great director like Aldrich failed me twice in one evening!

i just found a review online by Truffaut lambasting this film it's hard to imagine a time where this was taken seriously.

the bad seed.jpg (26.1 KiB) Viewed 7149 times

come on François, really?

[Wombatz]

And Olivia is always pretty awful.

Dudes, you can't be serious. She brings the milkiest of busoms to A Midsummernight's Dream, and her place in my movie history rests cozily assured on that.

Last night, Village of the Damned, rented because it's the rare George Sanders lead performance, but really the whole film has a rare sense of urgency. It's done by one Wolf Rilla (not that I buy the name).

[leroysghost]

Otto Preminger - Fallen Angel (1945)

nice camera movements and photography, but like Preminger's previous film Laura, this one fails pretty miserably in the plot department. the beginning and ending are alright, but the middle is very dull and draggy (in sharp contrast to the fluid camera work).
Preminger doesn't get talked about in depth all the often (aside from Angel Face, which is great, and Anatomy of a Murder, which i have yet to see) so any opinions/recommendations here would be welcome.

[Dan Warburton]

Last night, Village of the Damned, rented because it's the rare George Sanders lead performance, but really the whole film has a rare sense of urgency. It's done by one Wolf Rilla (not that I buy the name).

Ha, does seem a bit strange, but he was real enough. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obitu ... 13071.html That film is so much better than the John Carpenter remake (and I like Carpenter, as a rule). Scary!

Preminger doesn't get talked about in depth all the often (aside from Angel Face, which is great, and Anatomy of a Murder, which i have yet to see) so any opinions/recommendations here would be welcome.

Murder is good, and if you want to see David Niven doing pushups and a pre-A bout de Souffle Jean Seberg try Bonjour Tristesse (more fun than her Joan of Arc in Saint Joan) - but like you I still have a lot of Premingers to discover. I think I enjoyed Laura more than you did though. The theme tune especially, as played by Eric Dolphy

Meanwhile, last night's fun was


Billy Wilder, The Front Page, 1974

[Wombatz]

Dorian Gray double feature, because we considered lifting some dialog from the soundtrack. Not the greatest of ideas.

The 1970 version is utterly pointless. Not even trashy (cept for some nice hippyish garments). Helmut Berger is completely shallow, and a vacant Dorian makes no sense to me. Very prosaic.

I didn't take to Hurd Hatfield in the 1945 version at first, who is painted to look like he'd just had a facejob. The first half hour really drags (except, again, George Sanders as a magnificently smug Wilde alter ego), but once the insufferable Miss Lansbury has mercifully been killed off, things start to pick up. This also has the funnier picture, really amazing salon piece at first wich then turns into a Dixian turmoil of inner craters boiling to the surface flashed at us in color interludes.

[Dan Warburton]

Only three films so far have scared the shit out of my 11-year-old: one was Chicken Run (but he was only 4 at the time and started crying when Mrs Tweedy cut the chicken's head off), the other two were The Fog and this, the first version of Dorian Gray. Go figure. (I haven't got him onto Tobe Hooper yet..)
I see you're on a George Sanders kick there - All About Eve tonight for ya! (And then A Shot In The Dark, the only Clouseau film worth seeing..)

[Wombatz]

I don't enjoy All about Eve much. I don't know, everyone seems so typecast. For George Sanders in a Mankiewicz, give me The Ghost and Mrs. Muir anytime. He's so dignifiedly resigned to his own bad vibes in there, the poor girl stands no chance.

[leroysghost]

I don't enjoy All about Eve much. I don't know, everyone seems so typecast.

seconded.

then A Shot In The Dark, the only Clouseau film worth seeing..

yes, Sanders is great in that (and so is the music, speaking of great movie themes). I have to say that I also like Return of the Pink Panther and The Pink Panther Strikes Again (childhood nostalgia i suppose...).

[Dan Warburton]

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Liebe ist kälter als der Tod, 1969

RWF's first full-length film, a kind of new wave noir ménage à trois. A lot of Godard in there (A Bout de Souffle, Vivre sa vie, Alphaville..), and maybe a nod or two to Melville (Bruno in his sharp hat looks like Delon in Le Samuraï, and is just as cold), but some of the slow shots are.. well, too slow. Some directors really do slow well (Leone, Akerman..), some don't always get it right (Tarr does in Damnation, but not - for me - in Werckmeister), but for others it feels unnatural. For Fassbinder it works in Katzelmacher, but drags here. But it's an amazing debut, and Schygulla's phlegmatic hooker is wonderful. Great scene in the supermarket too, where she and Bruno go on a shoplifting spree (accompanied by some truly weird music, sort of Strauss meets Xenakis), finally buying.. a pack of toilet paper! to avoid arousing suspicion.

[leroysghost]

Luchino Visconti - Ossessione (1943)

such a beautiful film.


Roberto Rossellini - Roma, città aperta (1945)

third time through this and I still don't like it one bit. I mean, people accuse De Sica of sentimentality, but he never had nazis gun down a priest and a pregnant woman!

[hatta]

A Serious Man (Coen Bros., 2009)

I just saw this today and while it is a bit presumptuous to say too much about any film that contains any sort of depth on a single viewing, I can at least say that I recommend it wholeheartedly. I suppose with the Coen's some caveat's should be made, so let's just say that while I've enjoyed many of their films from the '90s I've been less then thrilled with their output over the last decade. While Burn After Reading was a relatively amusing comedy in their sillier vein, and No Country for Old Men was a beautifully shot and powerful drama, those can be seen as the beginning of a return to form after the wasteland of remakes and ill-advised comedies that made up the bulk of their output in the aughts. This film though, feels like a real Coen Bros film, the first since The Man Who Wasn't There. It also is the closest in tone (if not theme) to Barton Fink which is IMO their greatest film to date. So a welcome return in my opinion. I don't really want to go into the plot or anything (plenty of real reviews out there for that), but let me just say it was beautifully shot, impeccably acted (by mostly stage and less known actors) with a multilayered script that continuously unfolded as the film progressed. It ended perfectly as well, though I guess there has been some contention about that.

I'd still say I prefer Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski but this is certainly a top five Coen Bros. and definitely worth catching in the theater. Speaking of which my experience in the theater was particularly galling for this. The (sparse) audience was filled with mostly older couples and the ones behind me were of that ilk that exclaims at every surprise, whispers asides to each other about their interpretation and burst into uproarious laughter at the strangest times. Frankly I was surprised that they didn't try to warn the characters onscreen of unseen dangers. Perhaps if it'd been a different type of movie they would have. This pretty much is why I don't see so many movies in the theater anymore.

[jon abbey]

This pretty much is why I don't see so many movies in the theater anymore.

I saw somewhere this week film prices are up to $12 in Manhattan now. I haven't seen a movie in the theater since Borat, I don't think.