Recently Watched Films 2018

[Dan Warburton]

Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Night Train, 1959

This is absolutely superb - but I'm always a sucker for films shot in trains. Wikiplot: "Two strangers, Jerzy (Leon Niemczyk) and Marta (Lucyna Winnicka), accidentally end up holding tickets for the same sleeping chamber on an overnight train to the Baltic Sea coast. Also on board is Marta's spurned lover, who will not leave her alone. When the police enter the train in search of a murderer on the lam, rumors fly and everything seems to point toward one of the main characters as the culprit." Sounds like a simple noir, but it's much more than that: so many subtle references, like the insomniac passenger who casually lets slip he was "in Buchenwald for four years".. It's very much a study in alienation and loneliness - every one of the characters, even minor roles like the sleeping car attendant and the bloke above, is beautifully sketched.

[dialectics of shit]

Meanwhile, have you checked out the latest Bartas, Frost? Nice rip of that up there - haven't had time to get round to it yet, but I know you're a fan

Thanks for the heads-up on this. I'm familiar with the Kelemen film—another quality work with a rip that doesn't do it justice—and the Bernhard novel, but this wasn't on my radar.

[Dan Warburton]

Meanwhile, have you checked out the latest Bartas, Frost? Nice rip of that up there - haven't had time to get round to it yet, but I know you're a fan

Thanks for the heads-up on this.

You're welcome - I see uploader ronnie has replaced the earlier rips of The House, Eastern Drift and (coming soon) Korridorus too. Bon app'!

[walto]

Can someone tell me whether it's worth paying $20 to see The Room, or if the 15 minutes worth of clips on youtube are sufficient? To me, it looks a lot like the Warhol Dracula/Frankenstein movies, full of bad plotting, worse acting and strange accents, if maybe with less sex. So I get the camp value. But does two hours of that stuff remain humorous?

[Mo Noyz]

?!

Why would it cost you $20?

[walto]

It's playing at a local theater--same place I saw that awful Wizard of Oz. I mean, I like to give them business (they booked me once, after all)--but is the room really that funny?

[Mo Noyz]

Damn! I knew movie tickets were expensive, but that's ridiculous. Glad we rarely see a movie in the theater these days. And when we do it is a matinee.

[j-p]

Can someone tell me whether it's worth paying $20 to see The Room, or if the 15 minutes worth of clips on youtube are sufficient? To me, it looks a lot like the Warhol Dracula/Frankenstein movies, full of bad plotting, worse acting and strange accents, if maybe with less sex. So I get the camp value. But does two hours of that stuff remain humorous?

its no camp classic and I found it incredibly boring myself (and I actually like those Warhol films!)

also watching the movie for laughs feels wrong... it's like mocking a man's pain.

[walto]

Thanks.

[Dan Warburton]

Anthony Asquith, A Cottage on Dartmoor, 1929

Nobody remembers British Prime Ministers' offspring - just as well (Euan Blair? Carol Thatcher? You're better off not knowing) - but H.H.Asquith's son Anthony deserves to be better known, and this particular film is terrific. More detail here http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/ ... index.html

[Dan Warburton]

Nicholas Ray, A Woman's Secret, 1949

http://armchairc.blogspot.fr/2011/09/wo ... -1949.html more or less sums up my thoughts. Despite a few sparkling lines in Herman Mankiewicz's script, the central plotline is hard to swallow, but there's an intriguing sexual ambiguity lurking in the background, and it's worth a watch for Gloria Grahame. Did she sing her own songs? I suspect not, but can't find anything online about it. Time to dig out that Bernard Eisenschitz Ray biography again

[Wombatz]

Anthony Asquith, A Cottage on Dartmoor, 1929

Nobody remembers British Prime Ministers' offspring - just as well (Euan Blair? Carol Thatcher? You're better off not knowing) - but H.H.Asquith's son Anthony deserves to be better known, and this particular film is terrific. More detail here http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/ ... index.html

Indeed! His earlier Underground is also very good.

[Steve Minkin]

THE THIN MAN (1934) -- William Powell, Myrna Loy, from a Dashiell Hammett story. Nick and Nora don't appear until 15 minutes into the film, and for the next twenty minutes they're awash in liquor and liquor-realted jokes. "Is your husband working on a case?" "Yes, a case of Scotch, and I need to help him." "How come you're in New York." "My wife is on a bender and I'm trying to sober her up." Then they get going on the case, although Nick complains, "It's really interfering with my drinking." A climax with all the suspects invited to dinner. We feel like we're in on the joke, a fun ride throughout.

[Steve Minkin]

TOP HAT (1935) -- Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, music by Irving Berlin

Put a smile on my face for the entire length of the movie! Two great dance numbers and a half-dozen good ones. Funny if contrived plot.

[Dan Warburton]

Nobody remembers British Prime Ministers' offspring - just as well (Euan Blair? Carol Thatcher? You're better off not knowing) - but H.H.Asquith's son Anthony deserves to be better known, and this particular film is terrific

- by way of addition to which, and to Lutz's post above,



Anthony Asquith, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1952

his later work will come as a disappointment to those expecting the same kind of virtuosity in montage and camera work. Unashamedly a film of a play - there's even a curtain rising and falling to bookend the experience - if you're a hardcore Bressonian you won't give this the time of day. But if you like Oscar Wilde (not everyone's cup of tea, I know), this is the best film adaptation of his stuff I know. Read more here http://www.nicksflickpicks.com/impear52.html

[Dan Warburton]

Roy William Neill, Black Moon, 1934

"In that the colored natives involved in the film are rather harshly pictured as blood-thirsty worshippers of black gods who indulge in sacrificial orgies, the film may meet with objection in those situations where colored people make up a portion of the patronage."
Well, umm, yes! This is a potty pre-Code horror, or so it's tagged, but it's not all that scary to modern audiences. Suspenseful, maybe, when the loveable pigtailed lickle kid ends up drinking poison intended for Daddy, but it's spoilt by the ridiculously hasty ending and a stodgy performance from Jack Holt (he got top billing, though it was Dorothy Burgess who really deserved it). Jacques Tourneur's later I Walked With A Zombie is a much better example of the then-popular Tropical Terror. Up to you whether you deem it too politically incorrect. http://worldscinema.org/2012/03/roy-wil ... moon-1934/

[Dan Warburton]

Lech Kowalski, I Pay For Your Story, 2017

Not sure this shot is actually in the documentary, actually, but I thought we should see what the filmmaker looks like. I'm a great fan of Kowalski and wish his earlier work - which includes without doubt the best ever documentary made on punk, D.O.A. - were wider known. Here he returns to Utica NY where he grew up in the 60s, sticks the neon sign above on someone's porch, and waits for the urban poor - most of them black, ex-cons and recovering addicts (male and female) to come tell their tales of woe. And woe's the word. Excellent interview with the director here http://leblogdocumentaire.fr/i-pay-for- ... veau-film/
in French but stick it in DeepL https://www.deepl.com/translator and you'll get a good idea.

[Dan Warburton]

Alfred Hitchcock, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956

We decided to watch this one again after I read Bazin's rather too enthusiastic comments on it - I always get the impression that he felt somewhat bounced into digging Hitch because his young protégés at the Cahiers did, but be that as it may.. It's OK I suppose, and I guess Hitchcock liked it (at least enough to remake it - but the earlier version with Peter Lorre is much better), but Doris Day is just too good to be true and Jimmy Stewart just seems to be going through the motions. Bit of a yawn.

[Dan Warburton]

Chan-wook Park, The Handmaiden, 2016

He's got a thing with octopus, this chap - if they're not being eaten live they're rolling around threateningly in sicko grandfather's basement torture cellar. Bon bref, it's all right I suppose if you like steamy Oriental girl-on-girl action, a bit of Sade lite and a dose of Rashomon-style multiple narrative intrigue to placate the cinéphiles (but even this ardent cinéphile found himself confused by some of flashbacks), but it's at least half an hour too long and.. well, I got a bit bored. Remind me not to rewatch The Pillow Book, either.

[Dan Warburton]

Fruit Chan, Dumplings, 2004

You may never eat dim sum again. But as the secret ingredient of Auntie's dumplings is revealed quite early on, I'm not spoiling much by telling you that it's.. aborted fetuses Before you run gagging to the bathroom, I should say this fine film is much sadder than it is horrific - and it's superbly acted, edited and scored. Though you might not make it to the end if you're eating Chinese takeaway while you watch.