Recently Watched Films 2013

[Dan Warburton]

Walter Hill, Last Man Standing, 1995

I really can't decide at times whether Bruce is just pretending to be a lousy actor or really is a lousy actor (more likely the latter), especially when deadpanning his way through laughable sub-Chandler voiceovers in this self-styled "film noir western", a bona fide remake of Yojimbo - Kurosawa actually gets credited - which never needed a remake in the first place (though A Fistful of Dollars ain't shabby as movies go). If you're curious there's a comparison of all three films here http://www.h2g2.com/approved_entry/A1161271. And is this really the same Walter Hill who gave us The Driver, 48 Hrs.,Warriors, Extreme Prejudice? Even the slomo shootouts (homage to Bloody Sam - I've never seen more bullets fly in a film, even The Wild Bunch) seem laboured and sloppy. As for Christopher Walken's "Irish" accent, enough said. A pleasant enough way to spend a mildly hungover New Year's Day afternoon, but not one I'll be returning to, I think.

[Seth]

Just watched RZA's directorial debut, Man With the Iron Fists. It's undeniably seven shits in a one shit cup, but man doth its cup runneth over. It's probably best enjoyed by the few who thought Hideaki Anno's live action adaptation of Cutie Honey was splendid entertainment. Please understand that this is not a recommendation.

There's no intelligent way to write about this nonsense, so I won't even try. The opening fight scene/opening credits plays out to Shame On a Nigga and there's a surprising amount of mileage in watching Russell Crowe embarrass himself in a film this moronic. And it's very funny, in an Itchy and Scratchy kind of way.

You expect a film like this to be shameless, tasteless crap, so on that basis its two biggest crimes are killing off everyone who could pull off a decent fight scene well before the climax and a for-the-sake-of-it Pam Grier cameo in which she doesn't even get a line of dialogue.

[Dan Warburton]

Claude Chabrol, Poulet au vinaigre, 1984

Much more fun than Bruce Willis, for sure. Jean Poiret's Inspecteur Lavardin, a wicked cross between Philip Marlowe, Columbo and Dirty Harry, was such a success he ended up with own TV series. The ghost of Hitchcock smiles serenely down on it all.

[surfer]

Other than my annual viewing of Bad Santa, and a trip a few weeks ago to see Skyfall (ok, but everything after they get to Scotland is pretty deadful imo), the only movie I saw over the holidays was a second viewing of Dogville



which amazingly was just as enthralling and provocative as the first time I saw it almost 8 years ago. The performances are almost uniformly magnificent, with special nods to Paul Bettany (wonderful, almost carries the movie), Stellan Skarsgard, Ben Gazzara (even better than I remember the first time, astonishing what he can do with his face, and the way he makes his eyes seem so vacant), and others. The only two that I thought were less than stellar (my original opinion on this hasnt changed) are Chloe Sevigny - who I've never liked and who isnt a good actress imo - and ironically Nicole Kidman, who I thought could be a bit less waif-like and naive. I realize her job is simply to project innocence and guilelessness, but it strikes me as too flat, her voice never really rises about a whisper in the first two hours. The movie works despite her because she (like Bresson's Balthazar) is a mirror to reflect back upon each townsperson. The "gear-grinding" (AO Scott's phrase) shift to the closing credits is a severe almost fatal misstep that is best ignored, but otherwise a movie that seems more relevant (xenophobia, violence, injustice, self-delusion masquerading as compassion, self-reliance, equality, and enlightenment) to my country than ever. One of the best of the last decade.

[yonhosago]

alan parker mississippi burning

gene hackman as gene hackman
the balls squeezing scene
the eighties drum & synth soundtrack

...



otto preminger advise and consent

DW is right about it: the old ones give the lessons while the young ones try hard at their roles.
Loved the gay bar sequence, a sort of quotation to the German Expressionist films, as if a Berlin gay bar from the 1920's was growing in between an usual american city, waiting for the young mormon senator.

[Seth]

Second viewing of The Hobbit this morning. I found the 48fps 3D version so distracting first time around that I opted to see the 24fps 2D version. I’m not opposed to new camera or screening technology, but in this case it was the wrong aesthetic for the film. The 2D version is more congruent with the earlier trilogy and has a more painterly feel that suits the tone of the story (although that could just be a product of the Instagram levels of digital grading in play) – and you don’t really want to be thinking of technology when you watch these films. Plus the earlier trilogy was shot as though it were anticipating modern 3D, with all those rollercoaster model shots and vertigo-inducing angles, so there’s very little gained by actually having it in 3D (apart from in technical know-how for the film makers).

This film has me feeling sympathy for the writing team. What a nightmare adaptation. The Hobbit is a pretty crappy book, its ‘classic’ status a product of both rose-tinted glasses and conferred by the trilogy that came afterwards. Lord of the Rings is frequently sombre and pompous, bloated and was in need of their editing; The Hobbit is childish and much more sparing on detail, yet the story covers a similar geographical distance and takes place over a longer period. You can’t just make an equation of pages to screen time – there are jarring differences in pace and tone that need equalising in order for the film to make sense in relation to the earlier adaptation. There’s a silly number of dwarves running around, most without any clear reason for being there. There’s a story-killing reliance on deus ex Gandalf. Some of the events are just plain silly, with the objective of the quest narrative (dwarves evicting a squatter) being about as uninvolving as you can get. And while the establishing of the world and characters has already been done by the earlier trilogy, the writers have to anticipate that people will one day watch these films beginning with An Unexpected Journey, not The Fellowship of the Ring – so they have to find ways to re-establish a lot, as though this were the first film, despite the story treading a journey that’s almost identical to what’s already been seen in Fellowship of the Ring.

That’s a pretty tall order, and after the godawful Kong and Lovely Bones adaptations I expected to hate this film. But despite a couple of missteps (no Elijah Wood or Ian Holm, please) I ended up loving it. It’s neither ashamed nor afraid of its daft source material, which I found very endearing (I have a pet hate for writers who think ‘darker’ or ‘more realistic’ is better, usually without any sense of what constitutes realism or genuine darkness). Every department involved in the production turns in work ranging between shoddy and inspired. Ian McKellan repeats his earlier feat of single-handedly holding the film together, he somehow has the ability to make poor actors seem better than they actually are (Richard Armitage stinks the place out, yet McKellan manages to lend him a fair amount of gravitas in their scenes together). Martin Freeman is once more called upon to play Quite A Nice Bloke. Between Dent, Watson and Baggins he’s getting a reputation for iconic genre roles, yet he’s still the most unremarkable man on the planet. Augmented New Zealand is still beautiful; Middle Earth is still populated entirely by hairy men; digital body doubles are still invulnerable until they’re not; Andy ‘The Ham’ Serkis is still best suited to being the CGI equivalent of a mask actor; you still wish Hayao Miyazaki was making it.

[Seth]

On another note… I guess you could call it some kind of new year’s resolution, but I’ve decided to change my film habits this year and make an effort to watch movies that are a bit meatier than the escapist fun stuff I’ve been opting for over the last few years. I’ve got a pretty demanding day job, so I’ve tended to use film and TV to blow off steam. But I realised I’ve missed chewing over something a bit more involved, so I aim to return to this topic a fair old bit for ideas of what to watch next. Thanks for posting, all.

[Dan Warburton]

Alain Robbe-Grillet, L'homme qui ment, 1968

Filmed in Czechoslovakia, as it used to be called, though it could just as well be France (shop signs are in both French and Czech) and set some time not too long after the War, this could be a kind of nouveau roman-esque allegory of occupied France, but basically we have no idea what the real story is as everything Boris Varissa aka Jean Robin (?) says is immediately contradicted by something else he says or does (Jean-Louis Trintignant is perfect for this role, as he was for Il conformista: an actor whose work you can appreciate, but who's hard to like), or by something we see. Plenty of Robbe-Grillet leitmotivs, lesbian lite (check out the eye make-up) breaking bottles galore, and cool musique concrète by Michel Fano.

[Dan Warburton]

Abel Ferrara, Ms.45, 1981

Could be some of the worst acting ever, with Honorary Golden Turd Awards going to Editta Sherman as the nosy landlady and Albert Sinkys (who bears a rather striking resemblance to John Butcher) as the boss, but watching this trash is a real guilty pleasure. Who cares that there's a trumpet in the band playing at the Halloween party but only a screaming tenor sax in the soundtrack? Ferrara doesn't give a monkey's for the "psychological subtlety" of Repulsion or the "disturbing moral dilemma" of Death Wish (though you could write a rather lengthy article on some of the issues the three movies raise) - Zoe Tamerlis is dressed to kill all right and is having a ball doing it. All you need for a movie is a girl and a nun.

[Jesse]

zoe penned the bad lieutenant before she died ( at 37, cocaine-induced heart failure), but i'll wager you know that already, you cineaste, you.

i snagged an unbelievable ferrara doc on pirate bay; unbelievable in the sense of being improbably compelling even as the subject was improbably annoying.

LOL at the butcher / sinkys link.

[Dan Warburton]

Cinéphile rather than cinéaste (unless you want to finance my first film ) - what's the title of the documentary, Jesse? Today's the day for picking stuff up over at Karagarga

[Jesse]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396422/

[jon abbey]

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Tokyo Sonata, 2008

Yuko and I have been catching up on the more recent KK films, we thought this one was really strong. as opposed to his earlier Pulse and Cure, which are more in the horror film area, this one is much more realistic and deals with the everyday horrors of life in current Tokyo. the much-discussed cardboard boxes that Unami took as inspiration are in evidence a few times here, and the music over the closing credits (not by Unami) sounds like it could be an outtake from the Teatro Assente sessions. throw in that the cinematographer here, Akiko Ashizawa, is the one who took all the photos for the Teatro Assente design, and it's clear that Teatro Assente fans should try to check this one out if possible.

[Mo Noyz]

Love

Some kind of low budget cross between Solaris and 2001.

Not entirely sure it worked, but I found it enjoyable enough.

[Hayao Yamaneko]

Sans Soleil - Chris Marker

None of you who love this film as much as I do, will have any better luck finding the images you love online. The film is a seemingly inexhaustable cache of striking images. Online a handful of landmarks recur - Sans Soleil's Eiffel Towers and London Bridges - but if you've spent much time there, when you come to find some image to sum it up, they just strike false notes. This is definitely not a film about landmarks, consensus, endpoints.

I've sat down and watched this film so many times, but only managed to watch it all the way through through once. It's not even that long. The thing that stops me finishing it is that quality it shares with the very best writing, where a particular sentence is just too much. Your eyes pass over the words by habit, but suddenly there's so much in a particular passage that you have to intervene, put the book down to keep hold of it.
You can enter almost anywhere in Sans Soleil and experience that. And for me, different places each time.

All of which might suggest the film is aphoristic, encouraging dipping in and out. I don't think it is. It's as much a whole as any film I've seen. The thing has a shape, and it continues in spite of you - the sense of it doing so is very strong.
In part, it's true, it is a writerly film. Heavily narrated, and the narration is superb - it's as precise as it is oracular, and endlessly quotable. Beyond that though there's Marker's amazing, singular fluency with visuals - a verite that's far too imbued with natural style (like mr Yamada and his "action cooking") to ever feel like verite, and that anyway would be undercut by the conceit of the narration. And there's a kind of counterpoint between the narration and the images and sounds that is utterly singular in my experience. London and Robinson in Space take a very similar approach and seem better known - but they feel far more easily exhausted, more polemic.

I'm going to do that most gauche thing and call it dreamlike, chiefly because I really do think it is - not like Lynch etc., with that signifying dream texture. Like dreaming, it seems anything but when you're inside it - it only seems dreamlike when you're away from it.

[Dan Warburton]

A fine write-up, and a timely reminder to return to Marker, which I haven't done for some time. Too busy watching stuff like this



Brian De Palma, Blow Out, 1981

Having just read Brian Kellow's biography of Pauline Kael, I'm still amused that she could rave so much about De Palma and be so dismissive of Hitchcock (though I've probably said that before). This delightful piece of fluff in particular would have tickled the old double chin nicely, I'd have thought. Of course, the references here are also to Antonioni and Coppola, though Blow Out is to Blow Up and The Conversation as Ferrara's Ms 45 (see above) is to Repulsion. It's all great fun, and Travolta's shit-eating grin says it all. More enjoyable, in any case than



John Huston, Reflections in a Golden Eye, 1967

"My first choice for Weldon was Monty Clift, Brian, but look who I ended up with.." OK, so Scorsese claims the scene where Brando grins at himself in the mirror was the inspiration behind De Niro's famous bit in Taxi Driver, but Marlon's accent is so patently rifuckindiculous (even more so here than in Mutiny on the Bounty, as far as I'm concerned) it seriously spoils the fun. Not that there's much fun to spoil, though: everyone is royally fucked up (strange when Liz Taylor ends up being the most normal character in the movie), plot holes abound, the thing drags awfully and those queasy yellow filters get on the nerves almost as much as Zorro David's bizarre ballet-dancing Filipino houseboy. Well, almost. Should have gone for Sans Soleil instead.

[dialectics of shit]

I love L'homme qui ment.

[liquidmodernity]

Leo McCarey, Make Way for Tomorrow, 1937

I'm sure plenty have seen this already thanks to its pretty recent Criterion release, but got the chance to sit down with this the other day. Could hardly believe that it preceded Tokyo Story or most of Renoir's better regarded films, which were what came to mind for me when watching it. Totally arresting and humane at "growing old". The final 20 minutes especially took me off guard in their poignancy and subtly. Of course, manages to be impertinent considering the financial situation here in the US in the past couple of years. Final food for thought: someone born the year the film came out would be older than the film's protagonists.

[Dan Warburton]

Georges Franju, Les yeux sans visage, 1959

How come it's taken me nearly half a century to find this? Thankfully, there'll always be something out there yet to discover, and if you haven't seen this one before, I really can't recommend it highly enough. I'll park it up there on level one alongside Psycho, Vertigo and Les Diaboliques (maybe no surprise then that the guys who wrote those last two, Boileau-Narcejac, also provided the screenplay here). Keep all your buckets of blood and gallons of gore - I've never seen anything as genuinely scary as the face surgery scene. At first I thought about sticking in a screenshot for your delectation and delight, but then changed my mind; you really have to experience this in time, follow those scalpel cuts, see the blood ooze out. In black and white too. I just can't imagine it in colour. Nor, I imagine, could DOP Eugen Schüfftan (yes, the Eugen Schüfftan of Metropolis fame), whose photography throughout is simply awesome. But everything is, from the use of sound (those dogs! yikes!), to the music (sparingly used, take note Nolan and Zimmer you dumb fucks) right down to that amazing insert shot of a plane (who cares if it's a model?) flying above in the night as Louise takes another unsuspecting girl down to her death (reminded me of a similar bit in Carver's short story I could see the smallest things: "A plane passed overhead. I imagined the people on it sitting belted in their seats, some of them reading, some of them staring down at the ground."). Inspired casting too: Alida Maria von Altenburger baroness von Markenstein und Frauenberg of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire (Valli to her fans) is great as the almond-eyed Louise, and the jaunty little tune Maurice Jarre provides for her is a distant cousin of the Harry Lime theme, maybe a nod to an earlier and equally great Valli role in The Third Man. Pierre Brasseur plays it straight as the villain of the piece, a gloriously understated performance that inspires our pity as much as horror (not much humour here, kids, but it is amusing to see him come face to face with his son Claude, who plays one of the investigating cops). But the abiding memory will forever be Edith Scob in her mask, drifting along the corridors in her evanescent Givenchy gowns. What a simply outstanding performance. Damn, this film is so good. Don't miss it.

[jon abbey]

yeah, that one's very good. thanks to Criterion for tipping me off to that a few years back...