"The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp": While I've seen plenty of WW2-era morale booster films and Powell/Pressburger's "Black Narcissus", "Red Shoes" and "A Matter Of Life And Death", this one has escaped me. The opening scene makes it seem like a farce comedy, but it's a touching story of a British soldier's (Roger Livesley) forty year career which involves his friendship with a German officer (Anton Walbrook) and both of their relationships with three women, all played by Deborah Kerr.
"Manhunter": I read "Red Dragon" years ago so I know how it played out although the film differs quite a bit near the end. I haven't seen the 2002 remake to compare. Tom Noonan is ice cold in this and Brian Cox was an excellent choice for Hannibal Lecktor.
"Coup De Torchon": i was going to see director Bertrand Tavernier's debut, "The Clockmaker Of St. Paul", but the only subtitled copy I have of it was eaten up in my tape player. So instead, I opted to see this. I haven't read the book it is based on ("Population 1280") nor have I heard of the author Jim Thompson prior, admittedly. Philippe Noiret plays a slovenly but cunning police officer who resides with his wife in a Senegalese village during the late 30s, right before the outbreak of WW2. It's a very interesting mix of revenge thriller and comedy.
"The Player": Movies about the making of movies is a well-worn shoe but this one was fun, especially with all the cameos by actors playing themselves, none of which think highly of Tim Robbins' smug studio exec character.
"Confessions of a Police Captain" and "I Am Afraid": Both are a part of Damiano Damiani's series of movies which examine the socio-political climate during Italy's Years Of Lead. Very well made but maybe not for someone expecting a thrilling "cop movie" of the type the country excelled at during the same period.
"The Beguiled": Clint Eastwood plays a wounded soldier hiding in a girls' school during the US Civil War. One of his lesser films, but at least he doesn't sing.
While I helped my mother clean out her garage this past weekend, I found my VHS collection. Many which have been released on DVD by now were donated to the thrift store, but here is the majority of the ones I kept. Sharing with you who may enjoy box cover art:
I’m finally watching Ken Burns’ Jazz. It is really good. I mean it’s great.
funny, I've been watching it too, but some of it irks me. For one, there's an abundance of those stupid comments about "the most important musician on Earth" or whatever. One dude at one point comes in just to spit a whole paragraph about Louis Armstrong moving to NYC that's like "the most important musician in the world moved to the biggest city in the world to work with the biggest band leader in the world" or something like that. Put down your superlatives, buddy.
I'm about halfway through right now, and I'm not sure swing music deserves 4 hours of content, and I'm pretty sure I'll be pissed when it ends because I can tell it's just going to ignore a lot of actual jazz history that they could have easily covered but maybe doesn't fit into Ken Burns' mythology about America.
And it's kinda weird that one of the main criticisms of his work is how so much of it is told from a white american's point of view, and yet he seems to go out of his way to make sure white people are equally represented in a series about a musical genre that is predominantly non-white. I wonder if people like Machito even come up (so far only on a club marquee).
I’m finally watching Ken Burns’ Jazz. It is really good. I mean it’s great.
funny, I've been watching it too, but some of it irks me. For one, there's an abundance of those stupid comments about "the most important musician on Earth" or whatever. One dude at one point comes in just to spit a whole paragraph about Louis Armstrong moving to NYC that's like "the most important musician in the world moved to the biggest city in the world to work with the biggest band leader in the world" or something like that. Put down your superlatives, buddy.
I'm about halfway through right now, and I'm not sure swing music deserves 4 hours of content, and I'm pretty sure I'll be pissed when it ends because I can tell it's just going to ignore a lot of actual jazz history that they could have easily covered but maybe doesn't fit into Ken Burns' mythology about America.
And it's kinda weird that one of the main criticisms of his work is how so much of it is told from a white american's point of view, and yet he seems to go out of his way to make sure white people are equally represented in a series about a musical genre that is predominantly non-white. I wonder if people like Machito even come up (so far only on a club marquee).
Interesting points! I'm only on the second episode so far.
I saw the whole thing years ago. I enjoyed it, especially the use of archived footage and photos. However, many big names were left out (Eric Dolphy? JJ Johnson?...), with the exception of those who were mentioned in passing to, for example, mention drug addiction (an episode was dedicated to this) or influence on Wynton Marsalis. The wheels fall off on the last episode: "After 'Bitches Brew', everyone forgot about jazz...until these youngsters came along!". I remember that a grouchy Stanley Crouch dismisses fusion and rap.
I saw the whole thing years ago. I enjoyed it, especially the use of archived footage and photos. However, many big names were left out (Eric Dolphy? JJ Johnson?...), with the exception of those who were mentioned in passing to, for example, mention drug addiction (an episode was dedicated to this) or influence on Wynton Marsalis. The wheels fall off on the last episode: "After 'Bitches Brew', everyone forgot about jazz...until these youngsters came along!". I remember that a grouchy Stanley Crouch dismisses fusion and rap.
I just watched two movies back to back that totally work as a double feature but it was not intentional.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie - I'd never watched this and you know how film nerds will bring this kind of thing up, so I figured I finally should. It'd been a while since I watched any other Bunuel movie and I kinda forgot that he can trick you with things lining up to make traditional narrative sense and then blow it all up. Extremely dream logic, avaricious bourgeois types trying to get served a meal in like every scene and and thwarted in every scene. They never get to eat, but never stop feeling entitled to a fancy meal around a table with servants. I feel like there's a lot of individual stuff to break up and analyze but I deliberately didn't try. It was fine. I don't buy people talking about this being so laugh-out-loud funny though. It's like Sensible Chuckle Magazine.
The Big Feast - I kept thinking "this is the most 70s movie ever". 70s European movie anyway. Another critique of bourgeois entitlement and consumption, but with zero light touch. If it's subtext, it's like, those subdermal implants that make shapes through your skin that are fully visible from outside. No deep reading necessary: 4 successful professional men hole up in a lavish old house determined to eat themselves to death. The whole movie, outside of a brief intro, is just four dudes wolfing down insane portions of the ugliest looking 70s-cookbook-photography type food you've ever seen, in scene after scene. They get some girls in and there's some awful 70s sex, but without stopping eating the awful 70s food. This movie could be useful as a diet aid. I keep thinking back to it and going "I'm gonna just have some yogurt for lunch". It was like a 70s horror-exploitation with no gore. Same feeling. And while it wasn't pleasant and didn't need to be anything other than a 10 page short story, much less a 130-minute movie, I don't mind that it exists and can be watched. It's the wrench hitting you in the face of bourgeois-decadence movies. And the 70s concentration is off the charts: a brutally simple one line class-politics message that doesn't justify the story but is the only reason for it existing, passionless hellish sex scenes, loads of nasty fucking blancmanges, pates and shit, dark-ass wood paneled rooms that appear to have no windows, Marcello Mastroianni at his most intolerable, full juvenile mania. Also it had lots of farting.
So one movie about bourgeois types never getting to eat, and one movie where they finally do, to death. Appetites foiled, then sated.
I watched The Big Feast in college and I remember enjoying the fact that this movie exists more than the movie itself.
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is cool. I think my favorite of his is The Phantom of Liberty, which is even more absurd but has a few incredible scenes in it.
What a coincidence. The DVD of "The Clockmaker" arrived yesterday and one of the characters mentions it while taking a bite out of a sub sandwich. I searched and thought that's a strange premise for a film.
The Long Goodbye - this movie (and California Split) have convinced me to seek out more Elliot Gould movies. This was dope. Not a foot wrong. Robert Altman's muttery-overlapping style seems to have emerged almost fully developed. Weirdly, John Williams scored this... loads of versions of the theme, done by a bunch of different bands and instrumentations. I just want every movie to be this good. 70s LA burnouts etc. It must've been a big influence on Inherent Vice and Big Lebowski.
The Long Goodbye - this movie (and California Split) have convinced me to seek out more Elliot Gould movies. This was dope. Not a foot wrong. Robert Altman's muttery-overlapping style seems to have emerged almost fully developed. Weirdly, John Williams scored this... loads of versions of the theme, done by a bunch of different bands and instrumentations. I just want every movie to be this good. 70s LA burnouts etc. It must've been a big influence on Inherent Vice and Big Lebowski.
This is a great movie for sure, and I also saw a big influence on Inherent Vice when that came out (but I get where you're coming from with Lebowski too). Top shelf, this one.
This is a great movie for sure, and I also saw a big influence on Inherent Vice when that came out (but I get where you're coming from with Lebowski too). Top shelf, this one.
Remember where the goons are turning Marlowe's place over and he's got a bowling pin on his bookshelf, next to a golden bowling shoe they pick up and ask "what the hell's this" and he makes a joke response? Aside from the bowling link it's clearly the inspiration for the Lebowski scene where the goons pick up the Dude's bowling ball and ask about it and he goes "obviously, you're not a golfer". Also just the general theme of a guy showing up to film-noir detective scenes and not being a detective and just making jokes instead. And accosting the inept guy supposed to be tailing him... there's loads of links. Fun to see where those scenes might've originated.
I'd never watching anything by Renoir before last night! Saw Rules of the Game and loved it. Brimming with various energies. Felt like la Chesnaye's obsession with elaborate musical instruments would be strut-approved. Will have to re-watch it sometime given how much is going on in that film.
I'll obviously watch La Grande Illusion next, but Renoir's filmography is too long... what else do people like?
I've only seen Grande Illusion and Bete Humaine, but Bete Humaine would be a good followup after that. I'm not sure it counts as a recommendation though as I haven't seen any of his others, including Rules of the Game.
I just watched a 1967 Japanese "pinku" film on mubi, a sort of erotic thriller exploitation called "Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands". Was extremely "tame" for an exploitica film - the nudity seemed to be the excuse to make a gangster/assassin film. But it had some really cool formal experimentation done on what must've been an absolute shoestring, though it didn't often look it, and it got interestingly hallucinatory.
It was shot on those freaky barrel distortion old school wide angle lenses where the far left and right edges of the image compress, so when the camera pans, walls stretch and compress. That was cool as hell and I wish people would deliberately use old lenses for that more. It's a great effect.
That’s a great title. I bought a dvd called Blind Beast Vs. Killer Dwarf on the strength of the title alone and maybe a trailer. It was terrible and I only watched it once. I think I remember some naked lady in it.
I'll obviously watch La Grande Illusion next, but Renoir's filmography is too long... what else do people like?
I saw "The River" not too long ago. I liked the scenery and early use of Technicolor, the first of it's kind to be shot in India. It occasionally uses documentary-like presentation, aimed at Westerners of the era not familiar with the country and its culture. The plot involves young women vying for the affection of a man, played by a non-actor who was, in reality, a wounded war veteran like in the film (similar to Harold Russell in "The Best Years Of Our Lives"). "Grand Illusion" is more profound, in my opinion, with themes involving duty, class divide and mutual respect. Both are well worth the time watching.
I just watched the Pusher trilogy, which was good and fun crime stuff. It feels a little disconnected from Winding Refn's later stuff, but that's not such a bad thing. Some plots lend themselves to meditation but this was very straight-ahead crime and he didn't fuck around directing it as such. Mads Mikkelsen is great in the first two, obviously. Actually the cast is good all around.
Also watched a good number of Christian Petzold movies: The State I Am In - Good as hell. Some of the teenage dialogue was clunky but it was right up my alley - a teenage daughter of two militants in hiding comes of age and starts to act as an independent person, which is fucking up their whole program obviously. Jerichow - didn't really dig it, an adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice Yella - did dig it, an adaptation of Carnival of Souls Barbara - The best movie of his, of those I've seen. East German doctor decides to cross to the West. Phoenix - Post WWII human wreckage. Also very good.
He definitely has a mood he operates best in - tense thrillers where not all is known/real - and I like that kind of film, but they don't all fire on all cylinders with me. There's more themes to trace through his stuff, like a focus on jobs and work that is unusual in film, but I prefer to stay pretty surface level with them for some reason.
I like Petzold. Have only seen Phoenix (incredible) and Transit, but have been wanting to check his others for sure.
Finally saw Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre and it is so so good. It's in the same stratosphere as The Wicker Man in terms of horror. Adds something different to the dracula canon too (I'm thinking mainly of the OG and Shadow of the Vampire). Popul Vuh do the music and it's got it's highlights. But Herzog has so many tasty details in this one and the acting is
Have you seen the original 1922 Nosferatu? It's one of the few movies that old I think stand up to a modern viewer without extensive like, film nerd training. I watched a load of silent movies when I was studying but Nosferatu, Menilmontant and like the obvious ones like Metropolis, Passion of Joan of Arc etc. are much more watchable than most of what was made then, if you make sure you are in a "patient" mood, chemically or just mentally.
Have you seen the original 1922 Nosferatu? It's one of the few movies that old I think stand up to a modern viewer without extensive like, film nerd training. I watched a load of silent movies when I was studying but Nosferatu, Menilmontant and like the obvious ones like Metropolis, Passion of Joan of Arc etc. are much more watchable than most of what was made then, if you make sure you are in a "patient" mood, chemically or just mentally.
Yeah, that's the OG to me.
I haven't seen Menilmontant - thanks! But yeah, I like silent movies. I'm someone who actually enjoys Guy Maddin movies. That sounds like a backhanded compliment... but I love his films. Even the talkies.
He actually did a silent ballet Dracula flick bitd.
Here are the last 25 movies I have seen in the past few months which I haven't before:
The Horsemen (John Frankenheimer, 71) Hard Boiled (John Woo, 92) Walking the Edge (Norbert Meisel, 83) Following (Christopher Nolan, 98) The Silence (Ingmar Bergman, 63) The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie, 65) Funeral in Berlin (Guy Hamilton, 66) The Last Metro (Francois Truffaut, 80) The Entity (Sidney J. Furie, 81) Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 66) Come and See (Elem Klimov, 87) Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis, 50) I Knew Her Well (Antonio Pietrangeli, 65) Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 79) Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger, 65) The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 44) Ministry of Fear (Fritz Lang, 44) Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed, 59) Across the Bridge (Ken Annakin, 59) Murder by Contract (Irving Lerner, 58) Murmur of the Heart (Louis Malle, 71) Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 61) Escape from Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 79) Something Wild (Jack Garfein, 61) When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse, 60)
related: just watched tinker tailor soldier spy for the first time the other day and was underwhelmed. it was kind of obvious (sort of) who the mole was going to be, so the reveal wasn't that surprising... and i'm generally here for the big twist. also had hard time relating to the old posh british dude problems. (no diss.)
I try to get in one per day. I'm one of those dinosaurs who doesn't subscribe to cable/streaming and opts for the cheaper Netflix DVD-by-mail option where all the old movies are. "Our Man In Havana": I saw it when I was going through a Graham Greene kick. Honestly, it didn't make an impact on me as much as two of his adaptations above ("Ministry Of Fear" and "Across The Bridge"), let alone classics like "This Gun For Hire" or "Third Man". I suppose I set my expectations too high considering the names involved and the historical significance (set in Cuba right before Castro set up shop). Also, in general, I'm not a big fan of comedy-hybrid films, similarly how I feel about purposely campy horror movies. It's good film with the usual well-plotted storytelling Greene is known for. It's just doesn't have the serious noir tone I anticipated, since, unlike the others, I didn't read the book beforehand.
Halloween is here. I listened to the audiobook version of "Men, Women, and Chainsaws" which was genius, except for the Freud bits. Not everybody dreams of getting ass-raped by their dad. That guy had serious issues. But it did motivate me to watch Last House On The Left, which left me seriously confused. It has a rep for being brutal with all the rape or whatever, so I don't know if I watched an edited version or what (rented and streamed it on amazon prime) but the movie I saw was more like a satire comedy than a horror film.
There is this whole subplot where small town mayberry cops are in their own standalone comedy, trying to ride the roof of a truck full of chickens, getting hassled by hippies, and the young cop was the Cobra Kai sensei guy!! The main bad guy Krug (note the similarity to Freddy Krueger's last name) also did the soundtrack to the movie (and claims partial credit for writing 'All Shook Up') and at one point he is just sing-song narrating the events of the film while the baddies drive down the road with women in the trunk! This is all meant to be hilarious. The parents are party planning and making cakes while bad stuff happens in the woods... this is comedic contrasting.
At the end of the movie the dad starts booby trapping the house, just like wes craven had nancy do at the end of nightmare on elm street.
The whole time i was watching i thought "they can't be serious". and even where the bad guys park, the house is on the right, not the left like the title says, haha.
SO yeah, i think it was supposed to be satire, although a satire of what i'm not exactly sure. there was hardly any gore at all. at one point a stomach is cut open (although the cutting was never shown) and they gather round and pull out a large intestine.... and scene. they don't do antying with it, they're just like 'hey look at that' and then the whole thing is forgotten.
There is a dad joke in the beginning that made me laugh:
Estelle Collingwood: Mari tells me you're from Manhattan. What does your father do?
Phyllis Stone: Oh, my parents are in the iron and steal business.
Comments
"Manhunter": I read "Red Dragon" years ago so I know how it played out although the film differs quite a bit near the end. I haven't seen the 2002 remake to compare. Tom Noonan is ice cold in this and Brian Cox was an excellent choice for Hannibal Lecktor.
"Coup De Torchon": i was going to see director Bertrand Tavernier's debut, "The Clockmaker Of St. Paul", but the only subtitled copy I have of it was eaten up in my tape player. So instead, I opted to see this. I haven't read the book it is based on ("Population 1280") nor have I heard of the author Jim Thompson prior, admittedly. Philippe Noiret plays a slovenly but cunning police officer who resides with his wife in a Senegalese village during the late 30s, right before the outbreak of WW2. It's a very interesting mix of revenge thriller and comedy.
"The Player": Movies about the making of movies is a well-worn shoe but this one was fun, especially with all the cameos by actors playing themselves, none of which think highly of Tim Robbins' smug studio exec character.
"Confessions of a Police Captain" and "I Am Afraid": Both are a part of Damiano Damiani's series of movies which examine the socio-political climate during Italy's Years Of Lead. Very well made but maybe not for someone expecting a thrilling "cop movie" of the type the country excelled at during the same period.
"The Beguiled": Clint Eastwood plays a wounded soldier hiding in a girls' school during the US Civil War. One of his lesser films, but at least he doesn't sing.
While I helped my mother clean out her garage this past weekend, I found my VHS collection. Many which have been released on DVD by now were donated to the thrift store, but here is the majority of the ones I kept. Sharing with you who may enjoy box cover art:
funny, I've been watching it too, but some of it irks me. For one, there's an abundance of those stupid comments about "the most important musician on Earth" or whatever. One dude at one point comes in just to spit a whole paragraph about Louis Armstrong moving to NYC that's like "the most important musician in the world moved to the biggest city in the world to work with the biggest band leader in the world" or something like that. Put down your superlatives, buddy.
I'm about halfway through right now, and I'm not sure swing music deserves 4 hours of content, and I'm pretty sure I'll be pissed when it ends because I can tell it's just going to ignore a lot of actual jazz history that they could have easily covered but maybe doesn't fit into Ken Burns' mythology about America.
And it's kinda weird that one of the main criticisms of his work is how so much of it is told from a white american's point of view, and yet he seems to go out of his way to make sure white people are equally represented in a series about a musical genre that is predominantly non-white. I wonder if people like Machito even come up (so far only on a club marquee).
Interesting points! I'm only on the second episode so far.
Stanley Grouch
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie - I'd never watched this and you know how film nerds will bring this kind of thing up, so I figured I finally should. It'd been a while since I watched any other Bunuel movie and I kinda forgot that he can trick you with things lining up to make traditional narrative sense and then blow it all up. Extremely dream logic, avaricious bourgeois types trying to get served a meal in like every scene and and thwarted in every scene. They never get to eat, but never stop feeling entitled to a fancy meal around a table with servants. I feel like there's a lot of individual stuff to break up and analyze but I deliberately didn't try. It was fine. I don't buy people talking about this being so laugh-out-loud funny though. It's like Sensible Chuckle Magazine.
The Big Feast - I kept thinking "this is the most 70s movie ever". 70s European movie anyway. Another critique of bourgeois entitlement and consumption, but with zero light touch. If it's subtext, it's like, those subdermal implants that make shapes through your skin that are fully visible from outside. No deep reading necessary: 4 successful professional men hole up in a lavish old house determined to eat themselves to death. The whole movie, outside of a brief intro, is just four dudes wolfing down insane portions of the ugliest looking 70s-cookbook-photography type food you've ever seen, in scene after scene. They get some girls in and there's some awful 70s sex, but without stopping eating the awful 70s food.
This movie could be useful as a diet aid. I keep thinking back to it and going "I'm gonna just have some yogurt for lunch". It was like a 70s horror-exploitation with no gore. Same feeling. And while it wasn't pleasant and didn't need to be anything other than a 10 page short story, much less a 130-minute movie, I don't mind that it exists and can be watched. It's the wrench hitting you in the face of bourgeois-decadence movies. And the 70s concentration is off the charts:
a brutally simple one line class-politics message that doesn't justify the story but is the only reason for it existing,
passionless hellish sex scenes,
loads of nasty fucking blancmanges, pates and shit,
dark-ass wood paneled rooms that appear to have no windows,
Marcello Mastroianni at his most intolerable, full juvenile mania.
Also it had lots of farting.
So one movie about bourgeois types never getting to eat, and one movie where they finally do, to death. Appetites foiled, then sated.
This is a great movie for sure, and I also saw a big influence on Inherent Vice when that came out (but I get where you're coming from with Lebowski too). Top shelf, this one.
Remember where the goons are turning Marlowe's place over and he's got a bowling pin on his bookshelf, next to a golden bowling shoe they pick up and ask "what the hell's this" and he makes a joke response? Aside from the bowling link it's clearly the inspiration for the Lebowski scene where the goons pick up the Dude's bowling ball and ask about it and he goes "obviously, you're not a golfer". Also just the general theme of a guy showing up to film-noir detective scenes and not being a detective and just making jokes instead. And accosting the inept guy supposed to be tailing him... there's loads of links. Fun to see where those scenes might've originated.
I'll obviously watch La Grande Illusion next, but Renoir's filmography is too long... what else do people like?
It was shot on those freaky barrel distortion old school wide angle lenses where the far left and right edges of the image compress, so when the camera pans, walls stretch and compress. That was cool as hell and I wish people would deliberately use old lenses for that more. It's a great effect.
I saw "The River" not too long ago. I liked the scenery and early use of Technicolor, the first of it's kind to be shot in India. It occasionally uses documentary-like presentation, aimed at Westerners of the era not familiar with the country and its culture. The plot involves young women vying for the affection of a man, played by a non-actor who was, in reality, a wounded war veteran like in the film (similar to Harold Russell in "The Best Years Of Our Lives"). "Grand Illusion" is more profound, in my opinion, with themes involving duty, class divide and mutual respect. Both are well worth the time watching.
Also watched a good number of Christian Petzold movies:
The State I Am In - Good as hell. Some of the teenage dialogue was clunky but it was right up my alley - a teenage daughter of two militants in hiding comes of age and starts to act as an independent person, which is fucking up their whole program obviously.
Jerichow - didn't really dig it, an adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice
Yella - did dig it, an adaptation of Carnival of Souls
Barbara - The best movie of his, of those I've seen. East German doctor decides to cross to the West.
Phoenix - Post WWII human wreckage. Also very good.
He definitely has a mood he operates best in - tense thrillers where not all is known/real - and I like that kind of film, but they don't all fire on all cylinders with me. There's more themes to trace through his stuff, like a focus on jobs and work that is unusual in film, but I prefer to stay pretty surface level with them for some reason.
Finally saw Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre and it is so so good. It's in the same stratosphere as The Wicker Man in terms of horror. Adds something different to the dracula canon too (I'm thinking mainly of the OG and Shadow of the Vampire). Popul Vuh do the music and it's got it's highlights. But Herzog has so many tasty details in this one and the acting is
Yeah, that's the OG to me.
I haven't seen Menilmontant - thanks! But yeah, I like silent movies. I'm someone who actually enjoys Guy Maddin movies. That sounds like a backhanded compliment... but I love his films. Even the talkies.
He actually did a silent ballet Dracula flick bitd.Hard Boiled (John Woo, 92)
Walking the Edge (Norbert Meisel, 83)
Following (Christopher Nolan, 98)
The Silence (Ingmar Bergman, 63)
The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie, 65)
Funeral in Berlin (Guy Hamilton, 66)
The Last Metro (Francois Truffaut, 80)
The Entity (Sidney J. Furie, 81)
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 66)
Come and See (Elem Klimov, 87)
Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis, 50)
I Knew Her Well (Antonio Pietrangeli, 65)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 79)
Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger, 65)
The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 44)
Ministry of Fear (Fritz Lang, 44)
Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed, 59)
Across the Bridge (Ken Annakin, 59)
Murder by Contract (Irving Lerner, 58)
Murmur of the Heart (Louis Malle, 71)
Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 61)
Escape from Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 79)
Something Wild (Jack Garfein, 61)
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse, 60)
how was 'our man in havana'?
related: just watched tinker tailor soldier spy for the first time the other day and was underwhelmed. it was kind of obvious (sort of) who the mole was going to be, so the reveal wasn't that surprising... and i'm generally here for the big twist. also had hard time relating to the old posh british dude problems. (no diss.)
But it did motivate me to watch Last House On The Left, which left me seriously confused. It has a rep for being brutal with all the rape or whatever, so I don't know if I watched an edited version or what (rented and streamed it on amazon prime) but the movie I saw was more like a satire comedy than a horror film.
There is this whole subplot where small town mayberry cops are in their own standalone comedy, trying to ride the roof of a truck full of chickens, getting hassled by hippies, and the young cop was the Cobra Kai sensei guy!!
The main bad guy Krug (note the similarity to Freddy Krueger's last name) also did the soundtrack to the movie (and claims partial credit for writing 'All Shook Up') and at one point he is just sing-song narrating the events of the film while the baddies drive down the road with women in the trunk! This is all meant to be hilarious. The parents are party planning and making cakes while bad stuff happens in the woods... this is comedic contrasting.
At the end of the movie the dad starts booby trapping the house, just like wes craven had nancy do at the end of nightmare on elm street.
The whole time i was watching i thought "they can't be serious". and even where the bad guys park, the house is on the right, not the left like the title says, haha.
SO yeah, i think it was supposed to be satire, although a satire of what i'm not exactly sure. there was hardly any gore at all. at one point a stomach is cut open (although the cutting was never shown) and they gather round and pull out a large intestine.... and scene. they don't do antying with it, they're just like 'hey look at that' and then the whole thing is forgotten.
There is a dad joke in the beginning that made me laugh:
Estelle Collingwood: Mari tells me you're from Manhattan. What does your father do?
Phyllis Stone: Oh, my parents are in the iron and steal business.
Estelle Collingwood: Iron and steel both together? How unusual.
Phyllis Stone: Well, my mother irons and my father steals.
Good times.
So you're not a fan of all the Sam Raimi stuff?