Recently Watched Films 2019

[Dan Warburton]

Steven Knight, Locke, 2013

Brief extract from https://www.empireonline.com/movies/fea ... ght-locke/ : "[C]onstruction site foreman Ivan Locke (a stellar Tom Hardy) skips out on a vital concrete pour for a night drive down the M6 that will change his, and several other lives." Hard to give any plot details without spoiling the whole affair, so I won't. If you like films shot inside cars - Kiarostami! - you'll appreciate it. Not sure that descriptions of it as "nail-biting thriller" are all that appropriate, though.

[Claud601]

Has there been any good foreign horror on the past few years? Feels like such a drought

[Dan Warburton]

Has there been any good foreign horror on the past few years? Feels like such a drought

Umm, what do you mean by "foreign"? Reminds me of the Tim Vine gag: "So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said 'Is that the local swimming baths?' He said 'It depends where you're calling from.'" Best foreign horror story I know of right now is called Brexit.

[Claud601]

Has there been any good foreign horror on the past few years? Feels like such a drought

Umm, what do you mean by "foreign"? Reminds me of the Tim Vine gag: "So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said 'Is that the local swimming baths?' He said 'It depends where you're calling from.'" Best foreign horror story I know of right now is called Brexit.

Welp I’m American so much of the domestic stuff isn’t very good. Hazzagusa was a stand out recently, German film

[leroysghost]

idk what is considered horror but taken rather loosely there has been quite a bit of good recent stuff

Cat Sick Blues (2015)
The Lure (2015)
Grave (2016)
Hounds Of Love (2016)
The Wailing (2016)
The Cordial Animal (2017)
Cult Of Chucky (2017)
November (2017)
Requiem (2018)

US productions have been really solid as of late as well
Butcher’s Block (2018)
Cam (2018)
The First Purge (2018)
The Nun (2018)
Us (2019)
Chambers (2019)

[Claud601]

idk what is considered horror but taken rather loosely there has been quite a bit of good recent stuff

Cat Sick Blues (2015)
The Lure (2015)
Grave (2016)
Hounds Of Love (2016)
Shin Godzilla (2016)
The Wailing (2016)
November (2017)
Requiem (2018)

US productions have been really solid as of late as well
Butcher’s Block (2018)
Cam (2018)
The First Purge (2018)
The Nun (2018)
Upgrade (2018)
Us (2019)
Chambers (2019)

Nice thank you

[Piano Mouth]

Minatomachi - 2018



Documentary made by a Japanese couple living in the United States about a small fishing village in Japan. Mainly focuses on a few elderly people, a fisherman who captures seafood in his wooden boat by himself early in the mornings before the crack of dawn, and the workers back on land who clean all the fish and package them for sale at their store when it's daytime. There we meet the owner of the store, who also delivers the seafood to her loyal customers, including to a demented elderly woman who takes us on an adventure of the fishing village. Shot in black and white, the meditation on fishing and bringing all the fish to land from the sea felt interesting to watch and then it's mostly dialog from the demented lady half way through the film, while it was fun to listen to her stories and the back and forth dialog between the directors and herself as we follow her around the village. I liked it more than I thought I would, pretty straight forward home movie project style documentary that was done nicely with good intent.

[Claud601]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_O ... ace_(film)

[Dan Warburton]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_O ... ace_(film)

Oh, a link. How useful. I suppose it would be asking too much to enquire whether you actually liked this film, assuming you've seen it, and if so why.

[MRS]

Steven Knight, Locke, 2013

Brief extract from https://www.empireonline.com/movies/fea ... ght-locke/ : "[C]onstruction site foreman Ivan Locke (a stellar Tom Hardy) skips out on a vital concrete pour for a night drive down the M6 that will change his, and several other lives." Hard to give any plot details without spoiling the whole affair, so I won't. If you like films shot inside cars - Kiarostami! - you'll appreciate it. Not sure that descriptions of it as "nail-biting thriller" are all that appropriate, though.

This is marvelous. I love how I found myself pulling for resolution to the construction hang-ups, especially in conversation with Donal. "Run!" Hardy is a world treasure. Per that article he studied Burton to get that Welsh. Thanks Dan.

[Claud601]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_O ... ace_(film)

Oh, a link. How useful. I suppose it would be asking too much to enquire whether you actually liked this film, assuming you've seen it, and if so why.

Pffft saw it at the Tiff and it was very slow but the visual styles reminded me of spacebslls meets life of pi. It’s clearly a case of style over substance but Cage was passable as a believable character at least. I really can’t consider this a horror film though. I’ll take another go around when it’s released in the US.
Here’s a picture too

[Piano Mouth]

Was Locke based on a play? I saw it too and thought it was good.

[MRS]

I think Knight wrote it as a feature only, doubtless the context begs to be done on stage. As Dan said if I say anything it's ruined.

[Piano Mouth]

I can understand the idea of wanting to do a film for it, cuz it can show the technology with the cell phone built into the car, and the shots of the highway at night. Idk, for a few moments I thought I was watching a play, especially when I heard Locke's kids over the phone and their dialog.

[henriq]

Ulu Grosbard - True Confessions (1980)

A little bit underwhelmed, frankly. No reason I should be, really - this has much going for it. The cinematography is excellent, as is the performances from Duvall, DeNiro, Cusack and an awesome Charles Durning. But there is something about the elegiac framing that disappoints, possibly to do with John Gregory Dunne's novel - DeNiro banished to the same desert parish that the disgraced Burgess Meredith ends up in, and the big point was the brothers and their relationship? Well why didn’t you say so? The director does, to be fair, but meanwhile building down to a climax that doesn’t come, Durning pressured by the mounting scandal and then to just disappear. A conscious aesthetic decision, contouring a thriller to get a subdued, volcanic momentum going, doing a bit of noir weather? Or indecision, doing too much at once? I’m leaning towards the latter. The director’s command of some of his energies is great, though. Cyril Cusack, who always grates at least me a little bit, does glacial officious to absolute perfection, and Charles Durning, man… Talk about weather, or a bad smell, a presence of distressing pressure and growling tone, sweaty desperation and angst - he does a Robert Ryan who doesn’t give a shit anymore. Ryan’s acting, great as it is, is always telegraphed, his step into leering menace clear and readable. Thus a pioneer, carving out, a little bit pre-Method, the registers that Durning, Walken, and Depardieu in another context, inhabits completely a couple of decades down the line. Come to think of it, Durning is probably the reason I’ll return to this again. Maybe I’ll like it better at a later date.

[Lao Tsu Ben]

An Autumn's Tale, Mabel Cheung, 1987

One of those unassuming masterpieces. Second vision ten years after the first one. I found what I had liked again, but was more pleased perhaps on an intellectual level. The matter is kind of bubbling with ideas and I realize that I'm not that used to it. Sense of texture, rhythm, framing, spareness, plus two great actors, whose charisma is a fact of life rather than something subjective - water boils at 212 ℉, right ?
Also, how many american films present NY in a way that feels that natural, or organic, not tainted by any, I don't know, moral vision or sense of class ?

[Dan Warburton]

Ulu Grosbard - True Confessions (1980)

A little bit underwhelmed, frankly. No reason I should be, really - this has much going for it. The cinematography is excellent, as is the performances from Duvall, DeNiro, Cusack and an awesome Charles Durning. But there is something about the elegiac framing that disappoints, possibly to do with John Gregory Dunne's novel - DeNiro banished to the same desert parish that the disgraced Burgess Meredith ends up in, and the big point was the brothers and their relationship? Well why didn’t you say so? The director does, to be fair, but meanwhile building down to a climax that doesn’t come, Durning pressured by the mounting scandal and then to just disappear. A conscious aesthetic decision, contouring a thriller to get a subdued, volcanic momentum going, doing a bit of noir weather? Or indecision, doing too much at once? I’m leaning towards the latter. The director’s command of some of his energies is great, though. Cyril Cusack, who always grates at least me a little bit, does glacial officious to absolute perfection, and Charles Durning, man… Talk about weather, or a bad smell, a presence of distressing pressure and growling tone, sweaty desperation and angst - he does a Robert Ryan who doesn’t give a shit anymore. Ryan’s acting, great as it is, is always telegraphed, his step into leering menace clear and readable. Thus a pioneer, carving out, a little bit pre-Method, the registers that Durning, Walken, and Depardieu in another context, inhabits completely a couple of decades down the line. Come to think of it, Durning is probably the reason I’ll return to this again. Maybe I’ll like it better at a later date.

Our man MRS wrote a splendid review of this a while back, try the search engine. Yes, it grows on you. Try Straight Time too, another great Grosbard.

[Dan Warburton]

Jean Rollin, La nuit des traquées, 1980

Rollin's dreamy art vampire softcore films have gained something of a cult following lately, it seems, but this one, despite some splendid location shoots in and around La Défense and on the Arcueil aqueduct, drags all the way until its rather silly dénouement. I guess part of the thrill for Rollin fans is seeing Brigitte Lahaie in the altogether (there are several extended softcore scenes, which slow things down even more), but although she was jolly good in those vintage porn films she's a singularly atrocious actress. And not alone here, either.

[Dan Warburton]

Juan Luis Buñuel, Léonor, 1975

I couldn't get the screenshots to display in this review https://www.braineater.com/leonor.html but it's a good read. For those of you who have no time to do so, we're talking medieval vampire film (but with almost no blood!), with the director recruiting one his dad's favourite actors, the incomparable Michel Piccoli, to play Richard, a tough medieval warlord whose wife (Liv Ullmann, looking very anaemic haha) dies - and then comes back with a rather original dietary requirement: children. In the meantime Richard has remarried (the perennially gorgeous Ornella Muti).. Won't spoil it any more - the above review does that, btw - but, despite being rather slow, it's not without its charms. And a fine Morricone OST too.

[Dan Warburton]

Roberto Rossellini, Un pilota ritorna, 1941

For once, a decent IMDb user review deserves quoting in full: here's EdgarST's take: "For the first time I've seen a film by Roberto Rossellini prior to his Neorealist classics, based on a story by il Duce's son, Vittorio Mussolini (credited with the anagram Tito Silvio Mursino). So by its date and origin it may be labeled a 'fascist film', but not surprisingly Rossellini avoids any overt reference to or exaltation of the regime, from a screenplay co-written with Michelangelo Antonioni, among others. At first I thought I was going to see a sort of Italian Top Gun as the movie takes around 20 minutes describing the activities of Italian pilots, but soon the airplane of the title hero (Massimo Girotti, the star of Visconti's Ossessione) is knocked down and he is imprisoned by the British officers. Suddenly the hunter becomes the hunted, and Rossellini elaborates on his belief that personal stories are illustrations of history and politics: the pilot is nothing but a puppet of his country's foreign policy. Rossellini then describes the state of the prisoners, as they endure cold, hunger and disease, and are taken by the British from an old farm to a port in the Mediterranean, while bombs are dropped over roads, fields and bridges, to a patriotic ending (that is revealed by the title). Rossellini tells this story in 85 minutes, with early examples of what Bazin would describe as 'image fact': long takes, where the camera moves (including a 360° turn) not to advance the story, but to show the environment, the conditions where the characters interact. Rossellini narrates fast and synthesizes the fable, though his economy was not determined - as in Romà, citta aperta - by the surrounding events (war), showing the development of a style that would grow during the Neorealist movement."