last movie watched.

[incoherent grunting]

[incoherent grunting]

rude

[mellowgold]

im mad today!

[landspeedrecord]

hell yes, let's get militant up in here

[landspeedrecord]

murder party
this wasn't very good, but it's a neat idea for a film and I got a kick out of williamsburg waterfront circa 2007 being filmed as a wasteland of abandoned warehouses


ronin
not nearly as good as I remembered. this film has an inflated reputation because of the car chases, which are fine, and it's considered the best (only good?) film frankenheimer made during his late period, but give me reindeer games any day


happy death day
scott lobdell wrote this? huh. mean girls crossed with groundhog day. breezy, kinda generic. I picked up the clue right away. jessica rothe's antiheroine carries it


basic instinct
hadn't seen this in ages, it's still as good as ever. catherine trammell is one of the best femmes fatales of all time. there are many poor imitations, but accept no substitutes. I think it'd be pretty hot if sharon stone murdered me with an icepick for my birthday, if anyone would care to arrange that for me


flesh + blood
perhaps the definitive statement of verhoeven's contempt for man. would make a great double bill with hard to be a god


deep rising
great concept and still a lot of fun, but its age is really starting to show. I wish stephen sommers kept making films like this


the untouchables
I think it's funny how highly de palma regards this one (largely because of how well it did at the box office), and he does a good job, but it's merely serviceable. a hard work to judge because of how much of it has entered our pop culture lexicon


john carpenter's village of the damned
evil children are a trope I tend to find pretty silly, and I expected the worst from this one, but it's actually pretty good. way better than escape from la


escape from la
carpenter's decision to use a lot of awful cgi hurts, but it's really just a mediocre retread of the original, which full disclosure, I find overrated. the basketball sequence is still amazing


dead hands dig deep
a doc about edwin borsheim of the gothic rock/metal band kettle cadaver, who were active in temecula ca in the 90s. edwin was infamous for his visceral live shows, which featured a lot of self-inflicted violence, including genital mutilation (which I should note is shown, so be forewarned). the doc follows him years later reflecting on his life after his short-lived marriage with eva o. haunting

[carlagain]

can you ever forgive me is about as good as good tv

[Repo]

are yall really talking this much about the fucking second lego movie who the hell cares

best post

[Canadian Todd (for Canadians)]

like landspeedrecord's post and slate of movies but you literally cannot overrate escape from ny.

[deadbass]

I saw Widows last night and didn't really like it, which was disappointing. Just felt like it had too many characters and half-sketched plotlines that didn't really come together. Beautifully shot and well-acted though (I even thought Duvall was good).

[neuartillery]

I rewatched Ronin a couple of weeks ago and I thought it holds up pretty well. The car chases rule, but I also appreciate that De Niro actually underplays his character. I've never seen Reindeer Games.

I watched Deep Rising a few months ago while working out and that film's a fucking mess.

[mellowgold]

are yall really talking this much about the fucking second lego movie who the hell cares

best post

I’m sorry. I should be the last person criticizing people earnestly dissecting popular and glossy media. But this is literally an ad for ur children and that’s it

[landspeedrecord]

I rewatched Ronin a couple of weeks ago and I thought it holds up pretty well. The car chases rule, but I also appreciate that De Niro actually underplays his character. I've never seen Reindeer Games.

I watched Deep Rising a few months ago while working out and that film's a fucking mess.

fwiw reindeer games is objectively really terrible, but I'm a lot less critical of films that don't take themselves too seriously

[furrowed brow]

aww nvm.

good post lsr

[mellowgold]

landspeed i recently watched Basic Instinct for the first time and i had no idea it was a horny Vertigo ugh. so good. Sharon Stone rules.

[landspeedrecord]

"horny vertigo" is a great way of putting it!!!

sharon stone is so good that I am contemplating watching the sequel, lord help me

[neuartillery]

I rewatched Ronin a couple of weeks ago and I thought it holds up pretty well. The car chases rule, but I also appreciate that De Niro actually underplays his character. I've never seen Reindeer Games.

I watched Deep Rising a few months ago while working out and that film's a fucking mess.

fwiw reindeer games is objectively really terrible, but I'm a lot less critical of films that don't take themselves too seriously

Ronin certainly takes itself too seriously but again, I think it works. Love the Sean Bean plot.

I read the plot summary for Reindeer Games and I could see it being dumb pulpy fun or a complete disaster, I assume the reality is halfway between the two.

[palmer eldritch]

Smashing the 0-Line (Suzuki, 1960)

It wasn't that long ago that I had basically ran out of Seijun Suzuki movies to watch that had subtitles (except for his two last ones, I always drag my feet on this type of material, I haven't watched Oshima's Taboo either) but thanks to Arrow box sets and some misc. releases and the hard work of someone making custom subs on KG there's now something like 18 more for me to plow on through. I've only seen a few from his 50's period but I've gotten the impression that 1960 was his real turning point, which I suppose I can affirm or not when Passport to Darkness gets subs, but anyhow in 1960 he started off with the very solid noir flick Take Aim at the Police Van and later in the year made the excellent Everything Goes Wrong, a thoroughly new wave picture by my estimation. Between those, he made two other movies, one of which is this one, Smashing the 0-Line. The plot is just nonsense really, does it matter? Two journalists, one of them a goodie goodie and the other repugnantly amoral, try to crack a story about smuggling from Hong Kong, and really there's not much difference between them and detectives other than they show up at the newspaper office once in a while. But the core elements of later Suzuki are present: brilliant camera-eye, chaotic editing, and dark nihilism. I really had trouble keeping up with what's going on because he just moves as fast as possible at all times (can you believe some people think that's a bad thing?). There's one particular scene near the end that reminded me of the famous (is it famous? it is famous to me) smash-cut in Tokyo Drifter where a shootout between the protagonist and a pursuer suddenly cuts to another scene and you're left with no resolution, forced to fill in the gap yourself. Where it lacks in comparison to his later work is that well, the characters here aren't as interesting (and the dialog is perfunctory) and it doesn't have the scenes of expressionistic spectacle that elevated his best movies. Still, I'd have to give it a solid, hell yeah.

[palmer eldritch]

Oh, and as far as new wave shit goes, I think you could make a good case for it. It's even got this really weird sequence where he cuts to the back of a guy's head for a few seconds, for no real reason (he's not even talking at the moment, he stops for the duration of the shot), that really amused me. And then it continues as he gives his monologue to cut to slightly different angles between sentences.





montage

[pink snake]

I just saw all of the Oscar nominated live action shorts. Every one was so dark!

[mondrary]

julien donkey-boy (1999, dir. harmony korine)

i loved it! the photography was stunning throughout, werner herzog is absolutely hilarious, and the ending is shockingly moving and heartbreaking.

a star is born (2018, dir. bradley cooper)

i thought it was good. a bit standard and the end is a little Too Much (although i like the last shot), but overall i liked the spin it put on this Age-Old Story and cooper's direction was surprisingly good. i found it hard to understand much of cooper and elliott's dialogue and was finding myself just sort of hoping i could infer what was happening. not my Favourite (Lmao...) of the best picture noms i've seen so far, but i think i've only seen three or four at this point.

fitzcarraldo (1982, dir. werner herzog)

pretty good, although it definitely feels its length. the sheer determination of klaus kinski's character in this completely absurd scheme is enough to push the film through.

repulsion (1965, dir. roman polanski)

took me a bit to fully embrace but by the end i was into it. some of the imagery, especially the hands coming out of the wall, was really striking and freaky.

maps to the stars (2014, dir. david cronenberg)

damn, i loved this. immediately one of my favorite cronenbergs. such a compellingly bizarre movie.

[furrowed brow]

The Kindergarten Teacher (Sara Colangelo, 2018) - This one is wild. Felt way over its runtime in a good way. Maggie Gyllenhaal is great (what a talented pair of siblings huh). Umm, idk what to even say about this one, which is more or less to say that if I don't restrain myself I might write way too much about it, including a lot of criticisms. Anyway I pretty much love this movie. The tension in some of its scenes is really something. Idk, just see this thing, you might not like it and i'd even expect it to be divisive to some degree, but still it's worth watching, at least.

[mellowgold]

I really liked The Kindergarten Teacher it placed just outside my top 10 of 2018. Maggie Gyllenhaal is just so damn good in it! one of the best performances of the year. The last 15 min kinda sunk the movie for me a bit. ive had this pic saved on my phone for months now.

[landspeedrecord]

great post, palmer

I haven't seen nearly any of suzuki's work before 1960, I should check some of those. weirdly, I saw passport to darkness a few years ago as part of a suzuki retro that ran. classic premise, striking photography; frank depiction of sex, drugs & crime. the plot is garbage, but it's all about the style

[furrowed brow]

I really liked The Kindergarten Teacher it placed just outside my top 10 of 2018. Maggie Gyllenhaal is just so damn good in it! one of the best performances of the year. The last 15 min kinda sunk the movie for me a bit. ive had this pic saved on my phone for months now.

lol, good pic. yeah the ending is a little on the nose maybe. a subtler direction may have been better. idk, i'm going to have to let this one sit with me (and maybe watch again) before I say much more.

[internetfriend]

maps to the stars owns

[inmate]

the kindergarten teacher made me profoundly uncomfortable in a way very few movies ever have. it was really good

[furrowed brow]

I really wanna know what happens to Becca, and how Lisa getting her shitcanned from her nanny job will affect her career in, umm, acting.Toggle Spoiler

[tricksforchips]

High Flying Bird, Soderbergh

Honestly it was a pretty riveting film due to the great script and cast but I just don't understand why he used the iPhone. The film looks like a student film with big named actors. Could have been improved dramatically and would have a lasting effect if it actually had decent cinematography. It didn't even do anything creatively with the technology -- just plopped it in front of actors with some of the worst framing I've seen in a long time.

[Franco]

There was an interview posted today in the Soderbergh/high flying bird thread where he talks about the benefits of shooting that way - mainly logistics and opening up the possibility to happen upon new locations. Not to mention the fact the movie wouldn’t have gotten made if there was a large unwieldy crew

[tricksforchips]

There was an interview posted today in the Soderbergh/high flying bird thread where he talks about the benefits of shooting that way - mainly logistics and opening up the possibility to happen upon new locations. Not to mention the fact the movie wouldn’t have gotten made if there was a large unwieldy crew

Yeah, Soderbergh has long given interviews like this and talked about the democratization of cinema and that's why he uses the iPhone... also its ease of use. But it's not like digital cinema outside of the iPhone entirely requires massive crews. It's all so advanced. Anyone with basic camera knowledge can operate a RED or an Alexa Mini or even a Blackmagic camera. They all look infinitely better than an iPhone even in natural light.

The film cost 5 million dollars to make, having 3 camera assistants wouldn't break the bank. If you're talking about the democratization of cinema, you should make a movie with an iPhone for 50$. As far as I'm concerned, if your budget is that high, you are using the iPhone as a gimmick and that's it -- even if you say otherwise. It's posturing.