Recently Watched Films 2011

[billygomberg]

Primer (dir, everything else, Shane Carruth, 2004)



somehow this ended up on Anne's netflix DVD queue and I finally got her to pop it out of the envelope. I think I saw this last in 04 or 05, and the bafflingly low budget seems even more apparent these days, given advances in digital cinema.

whatever. in spite of this and the sprinkles of pretentious VO narrative, this is still gripping, confusing, and fun, a great example of truly lean filmmaking (sometimes too lean, off screen characters referred to in conversation elicits a few "who is that?" queries). no I haven't figured the whole thing out, but the looping and folding plot is enjoyable in its movements and twists and still spells virtually nothing out.

[Dan Warburton]

Eric Rohmer, La Marquise d'O, 1976

Gorgeous Goya-like photography from the mighty Nestor Almendros (at times, looks more like a Rivette than a Rohmer), impeccable (and hilariously prissy) German dialogues from the original Kleist. Watch out for cameo of Rohmer himself as a dumb-looking Russian soldier. Splendid stuff.

[savantgarde]

Angst [1983], a horrific account of a psychopathic Austrian mass murderer. Watching the gruesome events unfold themselves on screen, in disgusting detail, I was kind of hoping it wasn't based on reality. As I really suspected, turns out it is Apart from extreme violence, it features some unusual editing which heightened the cinematic experience for me. Apparently Angst served as inspiration to Gaspar Noé in his making of Irreversible, and I can definitely see how.

Interestingly, the score is composed by Klaus Schulze. Were I aware of this watching the film, I might've paid more attention to the music. I recall liking the audial accompaniment throughout, but I gave it way too little consideration, especially considering it was made by Schulze (whose work I tend to like).

[Dan Warburton]

Yikes, that sounds like a super Christmas film for all the family.. Last night's fun:



Bertrand Tavernier, Death Watch, 1980

Filmed in and around Glasgow, but the city isn't identified as such in the film (nor is the country - nobody comments on Harvey Keitel and Harry Dean Stanton's American accents - but with those buildings and dull grey skies it's the UK all right), this ahead-of-its-time (guy with camera implanted in head sent to film woman dying - or so he thinks) sci-fi flick began to drag in the last twenty minutes. Couldn't decide if it was a road movie or a Douglas Sirk melodrama (betcha anything you like Wenders knows this one - parallels between this and Until The End Of The World, Max von Sydow notwithstanding, numerous). Interesting clash between Romi Schneider spontaneity and Keitel method acting (HK: "should I have two buttons open on my shirt when I watch the kids in the park?" BT: "well, as we'll be filming you from behind from a fifty-foot-high crane I'm not sure it matters"), but Max's tale about the fictitious 14th century French composer whose music sounded like Stravinsky should have been cut altogether (along with the music, which is pretty eurgh). Still, good performances all round, but a flawed and frustrating - if daring - experience.

[.bzr]

Angst [1983], a horrific account of a psychopathic Austrian mass murderer.

That is one fucking masterpiece, an oppressing dive in what Evil (with the greastest E ever) is.


Anyway, I just finished this:

Flesh Gordon

Leaves you with a great void instead of a brain, a perv/dumb smile on your face.Feels quite good...sometimes.
Oh, and most boring opening credits ever.

[Dan Warburton]

Michael Cimino, The Deer Hunter, 1978

Fun stuff in the Wiki/IMDb trivia section about real spits in the eye, real bullets in the guns, real slaps in the face, real rats in the river and real near-fatal helicopter incidents, footage of all which made to the final cut. Hadn't seen this one in five or six years, and was impressed this time round by the pacing, the Mahlerian symphonic structure of it all - I see it less as three acts and more as five movements, roughly 60+40+40+20+20 minutes long, alternating Pennsylvania (well, Ohio and W Virginia actually, with a quick drive across country to Washington to go deer hunting) and Vietnam (Thailand). Still not sure I like that "God Bless America" at the end - but as I'm not American (despite what Couture wrote at AMG ) I can't say I feel the resonance of the song - how does this play with you yankee pigdogs out there? Even so, and whether or not you dismiss it as "a rambling self indulgent, self aggrandising barf-fest steeped in manipulatively racist emotion, and notable primarily for its farcically melodramatic tone pitched somewhere between shrieking hysteria and somnambulist somberness" (Mark Kermode, not mincing his words), there are some terrific performances all round. Anyway, what's the board's general opinion on this one? Pro or con?

[presquepartout]

fell asleep to this last night. one of my all-time favorites!



masaki kobayashi's harakiri

[presquepartout]

oh, watched this one a few days ago



timothy o'rawe's the basement

[Dan Warburton]

François Truffaut, La Chambre Verte, 1978

"How did someone as bright and pretty as Nathalie Baye end up having a kid with Johnny Hallyday?" wondered my wife. Well, if I had to spend more than an hour and a half with François Truffaut as he is here, hell, I'd fuck Johnny. Shame Daniel Auteuil was probably too young at the time, as he'd have played the war-traumatised widower Davenne to perfection. As it is, Frankie's acting just doesn't cut it. It doesn't matter when he's playing himself (a director) in La Nuit Americaine or a doctor (L'Enfant Sauvage), and his clipped flat narration works well in Deux Anglaises - but I really need to feel more sympathy for this character, and I don't. In the same way that Davenne is obsessed with honouring the memory of his late wife, the film is a kind of shrine to Truffaut's cinematic heroes, with its echoes of Rebecca and (the inevitable) Vertigo, and use of music by Maurice Jaubert (who, before dying at the front in 1940, scored films by Carné, Clair, Duvivier and Vigo - is it a coincidence that Atalante's Jean Dasté also pops up in La Chambre Verte? I doubt it). But even Nestor Almendros's photography looks dreary and sodden (well, it was filmed in rainy Normandy, so that might explain it). All in all, a pretty miserable experience.

[Dohol]

Despite Spielberg...it didn't suck.

[Dan Warburton]

Joseph Mankiewicz, A Letter to Three Wives, 1949

I'm trying to find out whether this is the first use of the vocoder in a Hollywood soundtrack (anyone know?). Whatever, it's a total joy from the first martini to the last.

[surfer]

how does this play with you yankee pigdogs out there? Even so, and whether or not you dismiss it as "a rambling self indulgent, self aggrandising barf-fest steeped in manipulatively racist emotion, and notable primarily for its farcically melodramatic tone pitched somewhere between shrieking hysteria and somnambulist somberness" (Mark Kermode, not mincing his words), there are some terrific performances all round. Anyway, what's the board's general opinion on this one? Pro or con?

I first saw this pretty early on in my life, when I was 22 or 23, and at that age, its easy to get swept up in its symphonic and symbolic grandeur. I havent watched it in its entirety in probably 15 years, but its on cable a lot and its tempting to catch bits here and there, especially the great period set piece (the wedding) that opens the movie, which I always watch. I'd put it on par if not better than the wedding opening of the Godfather, of which it might be derivative. De Niro, Walken, "the other guy", Streep, all put in good performances, though not really subtle or ambiguous ones.

The Deer Hunter is one notable case where Pauline Kael really made me rethink my opinion on a movie I thought I liked (though not loved). She is much more on Kermode's side of things: "The Deer Hunter is a small-minded film with greatness in it. - Cimino's technique has pushed him further than he has been able to think out. Too many of the motifs are merely symbolic - are dropped in rather than dramatized. (snip) If The Deer Hunter had been a serious consideration of boys'-book values (she earlier refers to them as "Victorian" values), it might have demonstrated that they did not apply in the mechanized destructiveness of modern warfare . . . . .But the fact is that Cimino believes they do apply . . . . Michael, the superior being, and realistic hero . . . . . in a Victorian test of manliness." etc etc

While she gives qualified praise to DeNiro, Walken, and Streep for their performances of such limited material (she keenly bashes the shallow emotional depth Streep is given to work with), and for Cimino's "talent for breadth and movement, and detail", (and I would add sound design) especially in the opening sequence. and then she goes on to criticize (fairly imo) the movie's pulp racist undercurrent, the silliness of the famous Russian Roulette scene, as well as its melodramatic ending, which I've since seen and found practically unbearable. This is one case (there are others) where I find Kael to be absolutely spot on. "Coppola without brains or sensibility".


Sorry I havent been posting here, havent seen a single movie in quite some time. I certainly enjoy your reviews though Dan!

[leroysghost]

Tomas Alfredson - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Thought this was great, the caveat being that I had no prior knowledge of the book or the much loved Alec Guinness miniseries, so comparisons are nil. The film is throughly engrossing, with an Oscar bait non-performance from Gary Oldman and a solidly anti-spook attitude to cold war shenanigans, but most of all I appreciated the slickness with witch Alfredson crafts a movie. I loved his Let The Right One In, and like that film this one has just the right balance between world weary knowingness (the brilliant drunken office party framing device) and camp genre gags (like David Dencik's spot on Peter Lorre impression).

[Dan Warburton]

That sounds like fun. That old BBC series with Sir Alec bored me senseless back when it came out, would be more interested in seeing this than trying that again. Thanks for the words above too, Surf'. Meanwhile, taking a break from dicing shallots and marinading my piglets, we just watched this again --



Sidney Lumet, Dog Day Afternoon, 1975

-- what a cracking film. Stellar performances from Pacino (well, of course), Durning, Broderick and Cazale, whose "Wyoming" (above) is one of the great improvised moments in cinema history. Not exactly a Christmas movie (bah, we can't watch A Tree Grows In Brooklyn and Scrooge every damn year), but whatthefunk.

[P. Wretch]

Joseph Mankiewicz, A Letter to Three Wives, 1949

I'm trying to find out whether this is the first use of the vocoder in a Hollywood soundtrack (anyone know?). Whatever, it's a total joy from the first martini to the last.

Apparently the 'Sonovox' dated back to 1940, and was used in Disney's Dumbo, but I think A Letter to Three Wives must be one of the first uses in an ostensibly realist drama.

I'm also a fan - with every new Mankiewicz film I see, he goes up in my estimation as a director; his historical reputation as 'slick studio wordsmith' does him no justice. The one I recently watched, which has now become a candidate for favourite, is The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). It belongs to the same 'living person converses with ghost' genre as Lean & Coward's Blithe Spirit from two years earlier, except this time Rex Harrison is the ghost, a cynical sea dog haunting a recently widowed Gene Tierney. It's an excellent pairing (their mutually dubious accents aside), and makes good use of coastal scenery (California convincingly standing in for southern England); there is a Romantic atmosphere comparable to Powell & Pressburger, wistful and melancholic without being sentimental. Throw in a typically caddish turn by George Sanders (anticipating All About Eve), and one has one of the great films of the 40s.

Unlike Capra's maudlin angels, this ghost belongs to no Christian framework, and could be construed in all kinds of ways (some Lacanian critic - if not Zizek, one of his acolytes - must have written something about ghosts as symbols of the Real, the unattainable, the impossibility of fulfilling desire in life, etc).

[Dan Warburton]

Splendid post - have got this one lined up for viewing shortly, as it happens. But last night we needed a bit of desert heat --



David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962

Now I've got that bloody Maurice Jarre melody stuck in my head for the rest of the weekend. Damn.

[presquepartout]

william klein's mr. freedom

[Jesse]

william klein's mr. freedom

starring john abbey.

[Dan Warburton]

"Let me tell you about the French. They are 50 million mixed-up, sniveling crybabies who haven't stood on their two feet since Napoleon, and that wasn't yesterday. And Napoleon wasn't even French!"



Luc Besson, Nikita, 1990

Unimpressed. Clichéd cinematography, dull script, mediocre acting (Anglade excepted, Reno too perhaps but he doesn't have much to do other than shoot people and pour acid on them in a bath) and fuckawful music. Had to cheer ourselves up with this instead



Carl Reiner, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, 1982

"My plan was to kiss her with every lip on my face."

[Dan Warburton]

Son Max being rather fond of The Departed, thought he'd appreciate the original. He did.



Wai-keung Lau & Alan Mak, Mou gaan dou, "Infernal Affairs", 2002

And the evening's entertainment was



Michael Cimino, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, 1974

Pretty good directorial debut, I thought - Cimino has a flair for editing and a damn good ear for sound: the opening five minutes are terrific - but the film gets rather amusingly bogged down in the complex negotiations between genres, unable to decide whether it's a road, buddy or heist movie (it's all three). The plot gets a bit far-fetched (where the hell did they get that anti-tank gun and how on earth did it fit in the back of Red's car?) and the sad ending is rather confusing, but well worth it for some of the mad vignettes along the way (Bill McKinney's trunk full of rabbits, Dub Taylor's end-of-the-world-economy-is-nigh rant at the gas station..), and a darn sight better than any of Clint's other attempts at comedy with that bloody orang utang.