Recently Watched Films 2017

[Dan Warburton]

Roman Polanski, Carnage, 2011

Hitchcock said he reached for a hit play "when the batteries were running dry", but that in no way detracts from the greatness of Dial M for Murder. And Polanski's film, adapted from Yasmina Reza's 2006 play Le dieu du carnage, is a real delight, even if things get rather too quickly out of control when Winslet throws Waltz's cellphone in the tulip vase. Also I doubt whether anyone could get so shitfaced drunk in so short a time as she does, just by chugging three tumblers of Highland Park (good whisky, Roman!), but that's theatre for you. Great ending - was he thinking of Haneke's Caché, I wonder? Haven't had so much fun since Abigail's Party. Bravo. http://hubreview.blogspot.fr/2012/02/ro ... rnage.html

[Steve Minkin]

[
Roman Polanski, Carnage, 2011

Haven't had so much fun since Abigail's Party. Bravo.

Loved it! Posted a review of this here, somewhere. And recently mentioned this in my post about Hitchcock's 'Rope,' also likening it to 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' in its claustrophobic limitation to a single room (virtually), which gives extra resonance to the stage roots of all three films.

All three films have this eroding veneer of civility. That tight, single room, unwavering focus makes that visible.

[Piano Mouth]

Speaking of stuck in a claustrophobic room I just saw the exterminating angel by Luis bunuel such a stinging satire and acerbic dump on the higher class capitalists loved this film


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[Dan Warburton]

Speaking of stuck in a claustrophobic room I just saw the exterminating angel by Luis bunuel such a stinging satire and acerbic dump on the higher class capitalists loved this film

Since you can't send a screenshot from your iPad (can you?), thought I'd find one for you Mark - cracking film, good one

[Piano Mouth]

No I barely know how to use the thing [emoji85]


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[Dan Warburton]

André Antoine, L'hirondelle et la mésange, 1920

The plot's a bit silly, and the ending surprising, but this is definitely worth your attention as a document of how Belgium and its canals looked in the aftermath of World War One. I have no idea whether Jean Vigo had seen it before he made L'Atalante, but there are similarities. It's rather unfair to compare anything to Vigo's masterpiece, but the Antoine is highly recommended. It used to be a Featured Torrent over at KG (I think), but doesn't seem to be one anymore.

[Dan Warburton]

Philippe Garrel, Anémone, 1966

Garrel's first short Les enfants désaccordés was cool, but he fell too far under the spell of Godard in his second directorial outing. Too much chatter - the director wisely cut down and even eliminated dialogue altogether soon afterwards - a daft plot, and to make matters worse the only version I can find is a lousy rip with serious subtitle problems. Unless it's reissued one day in a decently restored version, I think you can do without it.

[Dan Warburton]

Malcolm Venville, 44 Inch Chest, 2009

No, despite a cast including Ray Winstone and Ian McShane, it's not Sexy Beast revisited, but a banal tale of a handful of ageing London gangsters who kidnap a waiter from a French restaurant who's been balling Ray's wife. Poor old Melvil Poupaud, who doesn't even get to say a word in the entire movie, is sequestered in a wardrobe and awaits his fate, but instead of Ray dancing round with a razor to the strains of Stealers Wheel, he's eventually released, and Winstone and his chums wander off into the Sarf London night. It's a sorry, flabby tale, and no amount of effing and blinding (IMDb proudly informs us that the word "cunt" appears 48 times, and John Hurt - RIP - is responsible for more than half of them) can save it.

[Dan Warburton]

Alejandro González Iñárritu, Amores Perros, 2000

Don't ask me why, but after selling my 3DVD Iñárritu box in disgust years ago (this film along with the appalling 21 Grams and the almost-as-bad Babel), I felt a perverse desire to watch it again. I think I made the right decision first time round.. the fighting pitbull tale would have been OK as a standalone film, the silly top model car crash story and the old-revolutionary-turned-fauxhobo-contract-killer could have been dispensed with altogether.

[Dan Warburton]

John Carpenter, Cigarette Burns, 2005

Norman "Walking Dead" Reedus chainsmokes and hacks his way through a one-hour episode of Masters of Horror, a rather dull and clichéd (though as Carpenter invented many of the tropes of the horror movie, maybe we can forgive him) tale of a film entitled "La Fin Absolue du Monde" (whose title nobody can pronounce properly) which, if seen, turns the viewer into a killing machine. Or something silly about hacking off an angel's wings, dunno, couldn't stay awake and had to burn myself with a cigarette to make it to the end zzzz

[Dan Warburton]

John Hillcoat, The Proposition, 2005

Odd coincidence that we picked another film starring both Ray Winstone and John Hurt (and again, Hurt steals the show). This wasn't as exciting as I thought it might be, maybe because Danny Huston isn't anywhere near as good as his father or half-sister when it comes to acting and Hurt's erudite bounty hunter upstages both him and Guy Pearce, the brother who's assigned to bring him to justice (that's the proposition of the title). Or maybe it's just Nick Cave's gothic script. Still, great photography from Benoit Delhomme. One IMDb user review's entitled "Leone meets Tarkovsky meets Patrick White meets Mad Max" - but I'm not quite sure that's a good thing

[Dan Warburton]

Ingmar Bergman, Through A Glass Darkly, 1961

Max Van Sydow and Harriet Andersson play a couple of seriously tattooed beatnik drug smugglers who ride into La La Land on a couple of stolen Harleys to drop off a hefty bag full of coke to drug baron Gunnar Björnstand in a seedy hotel in West Hollywood, only to find him gagged and bound and recently ravished by Lars Passgård, here in one of his best roles since the transsexual pizza delivery boy/girl Butch Meathook in Bob Rafelson's The Left-Handed Ninja, who's waiting for the lovebirds to show up with a bucket of chicken wings and a loaded AK-47. Shitkicking OST by The Geto Boys. Not a word of this review is true, btw, but I couldn't think of anything else to say about this extraordinary film other than.. handle with care. Watch out for spiders.

[Piano Mouth]

this happens in Through a Glass Darkly?

[Dan Warburton]

this happens in Through a Glass Darkly?

To misquote WSB, "Seeing that all his attempts at easy joviality had fallen admittedly flat, he saw fit to withdraw as unobtrusively and expeditiously as possible.”
Why don't you try reading that penultimate sentence above again, slowly

[Dan Warburton]

Jack Webb, Dragnet, 1954

Max Troy: “This gonna take long?”
Sgt. Joe Friday: “You’ve got the time.”
Max Troy: “Mine’s worth money, yours isn’t!”
Sgt. Joe Friday: “Send in a bill.”
Max Troy: “I asked you a question!”
Sgt. Joe Friday: “You’re here to answer ’em, not ask ’em!”
Max Troy: “Now, listen to me, Cop. I pay your salary.”
Sgt. Joe Friday: “All right, sit down. I’m gonna earn it.”
Max Troy: “You already have, the kind of money you make. What do they pay you to carry that badge around, 40 cents an hour?”
Sgt. Joe Friday: “You sit down! That badge pays 464 dollars a month. That’s what the job’s worth. I knew that when I hired on. $67.40 comes out with withholding. I give $27.84 for pension and 12 bucks for widows and orphans. That leaves me with $356.76. That badge is worth a dollar 82 an hour so Mister, better settle back into that chair because I’m about to blow about 20 bucks of it right now.”

I think it was Thom Andersen who described Jack Webb's character as a kind of robot, and there is something oddly cold about Joe Friday's Los Angeles. 1954 was a loooong time ago.

[Dan Warburton]

Luc Moullet, La terre de la folie, 2008

Typically hilarious offbeat humour from Moullet, who takes great pleasure chronicling all the outrageous grisly murders that have taken place in a roughly pentagonal area northwest of Nice during his lifetime. The man is totally fucking nuts, be warned. The region may be more prone to violent irrational criminal outbursts than others, but it's still a great place to spend your summer holiday. We went two years ago and survived

[Dan Warburton]

Lars von Trier, Antichrist, 2009

Banned in France, eh? Must mean something. But I suspect if the grand agent provocateur Lars had called it something else it wouldn't have caused such a stir. The opening superslowmotion prologue is breathtakingly beautiful, but LVT is up to his old tricks elsewhere. Who gives a fuck about framing a shot? Well, I do - but he obviously doesn't. Moral of the story: don't leave any rusty drills or old pairs of scissors lying around in your mountain cabin if you invite Charlotte Gainsbourg to stay. Did anyone out there like this? I didn't much, but would interested to hear other people's alternative facts..

[Dan Warburton]

Jean-Luc Godard, Le petit soldat, 1960

It wasn't released until 1963, as you probably know - the French were understandably sensitive when it came to questions of the Algerian war, torture etc - and it's been unjustly overlooked ever since. But Michel Subor is gloomily magnificent, and Karina is, as ever, gorgeous. Watch out for a couple of cameos of the director too, if director cameos are your bag.

[Dan Warburton]

Brent Thompson, The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr., 1995

“Future events such as these will affect you in the future” indeed. Bon bref, if you like Wood you might enjoy this (deliberately?) tacky documentary, but I'd sooner reread Rudolph Grey's biography of the man. Then again, I won't. I suspect people who say they like Ed Wood movies are the same folks who secretly whack off to Youtube videos of skateboard accidents. There's so much good stuff out there, you don't need to waste your time with this.

[Dan Warburton]

Costa-Gavras, The Sleeping Car Murders, 1965

Wow, resurrected masterpiece! Thrilled to see this out on DVD at last - what a grrrreat debut from Costa-Gavras, a fast-moving, excellently scripted and fabulously well-filmed policier with a stellar cast: Signoret, Piccoli, Montand, Denner and Signoret's own daughter Catherine Allegret as the young heroine. Really splendid film, strongly recommended! (And, yes, a spanking new rip is up over at KG)