Movie Tab II

Ponyo (Miyazaki Hayao, 2008)
The Gift (Joel Edgerton, 2015)
Inside Out (Pete Docter & Ronnie Del Carmen, 2015)
JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)
Swan Lake (Kirov version, ca. 1990)
The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell & Emerich Pressburger, 1951)

Some thoughts about JFK, Lines? I really love that film.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

JFK is the one I had the hardest time rating in that set and I'm still not sure if I liked it or disliked it. I think I could go either way.

On the one hand the movie looks very cool. I don't just mean it has nice lighting and composition, but that there are some really interesting aesthetic choices. Like how most of the movie feels like a text-book example of slick period-film production values, but then everyone is wearing flat-lensed glasses that yell "this is a movie" (that and the fact that the film is crammed with recognizable celebrities hamming it up in small roles). There's a related tension in the movie's role as a docu-drama where the director keeps mixing in what has to be staged archival footage along with authentic reels.

On the other hand I don't see any reason for this movie to be 3.5 hours long (we watched the director's cut). Nothing really happens in it yet we get hour after hour of Jim Garrison on a lone quest for the truth. I think Stone is way too flattering to Garrison, who in real life seems like he was somewhat of a reckless, homophobic publicity hound. It's also too nice to JFK, but that's par for the course. Assassination conspiracism really started out as a grassroots movement of private citizens - many of them women - collecting documents in their garages, comparing notes across the country, even compiling their own index for the published Warren report, but Stone is more interested in hero worship for a white knight on a quest. That might be more justifiable if the movie was, say, 2 hours long but at 3.5 I found it pretty tiresome and had a hard time seeing the choice to exclude the more interesting smaller stories as justified. As with a lot of historical movies it's not just that it's not true, it's that the more interesting and complicated aspects of the story are glossed over or flat-out altered. In spite of that, the movie did a good job of conveying how people of my parents' and grandparents' generations could get obsessed with these events, something that's never been obvious to me before. I also appreciated its broader point about government secrecy, though even here there was plenty that I could quibble with.

Not including films I've watched for tournaments

Frankenhooker +
Street Trash
Driller Killer
Silence of the lambs
Flower and Snake
Chopping Mall
Lucio Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin
Barbed Wire Dolls +
Sadomania
Blood and Donuts +
Black Emanuelle
Tombs of the Blind Dead +
City of God +
City of Men
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

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Yeah, I think that's a great idea!

Hot Pursuit (Anne Fletcher, 2015)

Life of Crime (Daniel Schechter, 2014)

In Secret (Charlie Stratton, 2014)

+
Fargo (Coen Bros., 1996)

+

Paul Bunyan appears to witness much of the violent criminality and BS in the film, appropriately holding his ax but without Babe, his blue ox.
Mississippi Grind (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2015)

Scrooged (Richard Donner, 1988)

-
The Hellcats (Robert F. Slatzer, 1968)

Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)

+

Boozy lawyer Jack Nicholson doesn’t want to turn into a heroin junkie by smoking a joint, but he decides to take a chance.
Hours (Eric Heisserer, 2013)

-
The Single Moms Club (Tyler Perry, 2014)

+
The Girl on the Train (André Téchiné, 2009)

The Star (Stuart Heisler, 1952)

Faded Oscar-winning movie star Bette Davis can no longer support herself or her family, but she still yearns for another big role. When she gets arrested for drunk driving, she’s bailed out by a former actor (Sterling Hayden) to whom she gave a break.
Barefoot (Andrew Fleming, 2014)

Ink (Jamin Winans, 2009)

+
Who's Camus, Anyway? (Mitsuo Yanagimachi, 2006)

Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986)

FBI profiler William Petersen tries to save a victim of serial killer “The Tooth Fairy” (Tom Noonan)
Blood Ties (Guillaume Canet, 2013)

-
Repentance (Philippe Caland, 2014)

Beverly Hills Cop II (Tony Scott, 1987)

Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)

Three teenagers who feel rejected by their parents develop a kinship with each other – Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo & James Dean.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

The Visit - a creepy horror/comedy/thriller about two kids going to their grandparents' home for a week only to find that Nana and Pop-Pop aren't quite right...It's definitely worth watching even though i sort of wanted it to be scarier.

What We Do in the Shadows - Jemaine Clements from Flight of the Conchords plays Vlad, a centuries old vampire who lives in a flat with three other Nosferatu from different eras in this screamingly funny, gruesome, and endlessly quotable faux documentary from New Zealand. Very clever, and it rewards multiple viewings. ++

Critters - 80's B-movie rip off of Gremlins, with furry little creatures from outer space terrorizing a farm. Dee Wallace is the only good actor in this one, and the special effects are really low budget, even for it's time. That said, it's sort of endearing. They tried. They tried SO HARD. for effort. for execution.

My Name is Bruce - Meta horror comedy starring and directed by horror legend, Bruce Campbell. Worth watching, definitely. Guan-di is his name.

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"You, me, everyone...we are all made of star stuff." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/

What We Do in the Shadows is hilarious. My favorite of Jemaine's roles is still Dr. Ronald Chevalier (in Gentlemen Broncos). Have you seen it?

The Future (Miranda July, 2011)

+
Buffalo '66 (Vincent Gallo, 1998)

Beverly Hills Cop III (John Landis, 1994)

Change Nothing aka Ne Change Rien (Pedro Costa, 2009)

French actress/singer Jeanne Balibar rehearses and performs in concert while being filmed in long B&W takes.
Happy Tears (Michael Lichtenstein, 2010)

I, Frankenstein (Stuart Beattie, 2014)

The Cutting Edge: Going for the Gold (Sean McNamara, 2006)

Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven, 2015)

-

Walking home from school, five Turkish sisters’ innocently play games with boys at the beach and then get locked up at home by their father who tries to marry them off before they “ruin” themselves and his good name.
Jim Breuer: Comic Frenzy (Adam Dubin, 2015)

Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash & Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2011)

Life Stinks (Mel Brooks, 1991)

+
Anita (Freia Lee Mock, 2013)

-

It's been over 20 years since attorney Anita Hill testified at the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and the perception of sexual harassment in the workplace has drastically changed since then.
Star Kid (Manny Coto, 1997)

+
Dying Breed (Jody Dwyer, 2008)

Craig Ferguson: Does This Need to Be Said? (Keith Truesdell, 2011)

+
Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson (Trish Dolman, 2011)

Paul Watson proved too radical for Greenpeace and had to go his own way in his battle to stop whale hunting, going so far as to holding ships “for ransom” and sabotaging others.
Untamed Heart (Tony Bill, 1993)

Crocodile Dundee II (John Cornell, 1988)

Leprechaun: Origins (Zach Lipovsky, 2014)

+
Welcome to Leith (Michael Beach Nichols & Christopher K. Walker, 2015)

White Supremacist Craig Cobb moves to Leith, North Dakota, a town of 24, and buys up property with the intention of bringing many more Aryan separatists to take over the town through democratic voting and practice their hate, and in spite of the original citizens’ disapproval, it’s all apparently legal. Here, citizens burn down Cobb’s condemned structure while he's in jail, but he still owns the property.

Hail Ceasar !



Coen's weakest effort of their post-No Country for Old Men spree. If some of their previous films suggested that they just like to make movies without really having anything to say, than this one confirms that. It's funny in spots and has a lot of incredible photography, an all star cast, and a lot of great stand alone scenes, but it barely ties together. This would have been premise for a television series, but doesn't really merit a feature film.




North By Northwest



Pure over the top entertainment. My second favorite from my mini-marathon of Hitchcock movies. Although it gets increasingly goofy in the second half and has the obligatory Hitchcock scene where everything is unnecessarily explained to the viewer, this action-flick holds up incredibly well.




The Innkeepers



Just a simple, slow paced jump scare marathon. If that sounds like your kind of thing you'll probably enjoy this one.



Shadow of a Doubt



Dated. This movie is older than the dirt it sleeps in and it shows. There are some funny moments and witty dialogue in the first half, but it all seems to dry up as this painful experience stretches far beyond a reasonable run time. This is a stupid movie, it makes your typical 80's slasher flick look distinguished in comparison. None of Hitchcock's good trademark elements are really here yet.

Critics cite this as a sort of time capsule for the 1940's, but that would only suggest that everyone back then was mentally retarded. Were people really this alien back then, or were they pretty much the same as us today ? (as examplified in many movies of that era like Third Man, Citizen Kane, Double Indemnity, Casablanca)



Notorious




Hitchcock made this one only a few years after Shadow of a Doubt, but it's a huge step forward. As expected it's incredibly goofy, but it immerses you in the plot pretty effectively. Unlike Shadow of a Doubt there's an actual sense of dread hanging in the air, but this gets fumbled in the second half where every single twist is explained in the least entertaining way possible.




Vertigo



Hands down my favorite Hitchcock movie yet. Right off the bat you're treated to an incredible intro sequence set against Bernard Herrmann's terrifying and hypnotic musical score. The mystery takes it time unfolding, until another unnecessary reveal, yet in Vertigo there's so much going on that this isn't a huge blow against the story.

James Stewart gives the performance of a lifetime and Hitchcock's cinematographer is just going absolutely nuts behind the camera. This movie comes alive in every aspect, even though I think they kind of botched the execution of the final scene, there's too many stunning, memorable moments in this movie for it be considered "just good".

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Trumbo (Peter Askin, 2007)

Dalton Trumbo was a screenwriter who mostly worked for M-G-M and RKO Radio Pictures in the 1930s and 1940s. During that time, he earned a nomination for Best Screenplay for Kitty Foyle and wrote some other well-known flicks such as A Guy Named Joe, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. After WWII, he went before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and refused to name names of Communists or former Communists who were working in the entertainment industry. He was subsequently blacklisted as a member of the Hollywood Ten, imprisoned, later moved to Mexico to get away from the ostracization he and his famiy felt and then began to successfully earn money by writing and getting paid for scripts by using fronts. In fact, two of these fronted films earned Oscars for Best Motion Picture Story, Roman Holiday and The Brave One. (Best Motion Picture Story is a category which the Oscars stopped handing out in the '50s; it basically meant Best original story upon which a screenplay was based.)

This film shows Trumbo in archive footage and home movies, but his words are mostly spoken by a number of famous actors. It's both a documentary and a love poem from a son to his father in the form of a play. Christopker Trumbo wrote the play and adapted it to the screen. The actors who speak his father's words include Michael Douglas, Donald Sutherland, Paul Giamatti, Josh Lucas, Joan Allen, David Straithairn, Brian Dennehy, Liam Neeson, Nathan Lane, and Dustin Hoffman. Kirk Douglas (in present day) and archive footage of Otto Preminger both talk about how they credited him for Spartacus and Exodus in order to try to break the blacklist. Although each of the famous actors is excellent and often very dramatic in speaking Trumbo's eloquent words about freedom found in our U.S. Constitution, the highlight for me has to be the hilarious section where Nathan Lane reads a letter which Dalton wrote to his son Christopher about the pleasures of masturbation. That's pretty much a laugh riot worthy of the hands (forgive the pun) of Richard Pryor. Another extremely-moving moment is when Dalton Trumbo himself talks about how the fall of Barcelona in Spain could have perhaps been prevented if we picked and chose our fights better, especially concerning the Fascists in the 1930s. This film is recommended to all who want to better understand the history of American politics, its effect on films and to see some of our current actors speak the words of an American who stood up for his rights during a dark era of American history. I'm not going to get into the idea about how as soon as WWII ended that we were immediately involved in a "Cold War". I don't like the idea that if our country is the best and brightest in the world that we used our enemies (Communist USSR and China) to defeat our other, Bigger, enemies (Germany and Japan) and then had to turn on "former allies". It makes me think that it's only the Constitution which sets us apart rather than our actual "deeds and ideals", and many countries have a constitution virtually similar to ours currently.

Dalton Trumbo has written some of my fave flicks [Spartacus, Exodus, Lonely are the Brave, Papillon (hk's loss)], and he also wrote and directed a very personal anti-war film called Johnny Got His Gun based on his own powerful novel. If you can stand how gut-wrenching it is, give it a watch and/or read. It probably delineates the Constitution and the loss of basic human rights better than any film I've ever seen, without even being "about that subject" at all.

Anvil!: The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi, 2008)



Powerful and humorous film about how people who have grown up together can be in an awesome band for over 35 years and still have almost nobody else know about it. This is a serious film, not a mockumentary; of course, it's sometimes unclear if any of it was staged for the camera, but I'll cut this film more slack than many in that regard and just say that it's basically unadulterated truth. The film begins with many of heavy metal's demigods extolling the awesomeness of Canada's metal monster band Anvil and their debut album, Metal on Metal which influenced them. In fact, the opening shots at an early 1980s Japanese metal festival prove that Anvil kicks all the other bands of their time's asses, and we're talking about groups such as Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax. So, what happened to Anvil? They kept touring and putting out low-budget albums but, except for a small rabid fanbase, they faded into obscurity and spent most of the last 25 years doing day jobs involving delivering food and construction work. The two original members of Anvil's four-man lineup who are still around in the 2000s are best friends, lead guitar/vocalist Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer extraordinaire Robb Reiner (yes, that's his name). They decide to trust an internet fan to get them a European tour in the 2000s, and although it starts out OK, it turns into a nightmare.

Basically, Anvil is a band which has suffered from crappy management its entire existence. The band members have wives, kids, brothers, sisters, etc., who all try to help them out but they see them more as little kids who never grew up and still want to "play", trying to see their dream come true, even if it hasn't for most of their lives. Of course, the viewer is pulling for the band because they seem just like somebody in your own family and you can see their talent (even if certain styles have passed them by). The thing about this movie which really hits home to me is when Reiner and Lips get into fights over things which really have nothing to do with each other, but only occur because the other one is that person's best friend and actually has more history with that person than even their wives and kids. I can total relate to that because I have an unmarried "best" friend who's alienated from his siblings and gets along well with his casual friends, but he often gets pissed off at me just because I'm the person who talks to him about things which piss him off. I keep trying to get him to relax and stay in the moment, but he wants to get mad at others and the way he thinks his life turned out and then he goes off, seemingly blaming me for whatever lousy path his life takes. I still love him though because he's family, and you know how sometimes family are the hardest to love because they take so much for granted? (Just because they know that you'll usually take it?) Well, this flick displays this kind of relationship better than most fictional films I've ever seen. And besides that, it has what I'd call a happy ending . So rock on Anvil, and Peace to people who can never seem to find it.

Love the full reviews Mark. Haven't seen either but Mofo has put both on the radar.

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Letterboxd

Occasionally I'll be going through my old reviews where I had several in one post and edit them so that they only have one review in them. That's the only way I can get them into the Reviews section. That's what I did here because I was going to quote my Anvil review for the Doc countdown anyway, so I'm killing two birds with one stone.

I repped Meats review after I saw his North by Northwest thoughts, then I saw his ratings for Shadow of a Doubt and Notorious At least he redeemed it with Vertigo

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Aladdin (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1992) -
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Gore Verbinsky, 2006) +
Ragtime (Milos Forman, 1981) +

Meat's gone off.

God’s Not Dead (Harold Cronk, 2014)

Strikes and Spares (Felix E. Feist, 1934)

The Draughtsman's Contract (Peter Greenaway, 1983)

What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi, 2014)

-

Three vampires (Jemaine Clement, Johnny Brugh & Taika Waititi), who share a flat with a Nosferatu-type (Ben Fransham) who doesn’t get out much, prepare to spend a night on the town.
The House on Pine Street (Keeling Bros., 2015)

LT: The Life & Times (Peter Radovich Jr., 2013)

Rasputin (Uli Edel, 1996)

Motel Hell (Kevin Connor, 1980)

Smoked meat entrepreneur/serial killer Farmer Vincent (Rory Calhoun) has a chainsaw battle with his sheriff brother (Paul Linke).
The Bears and the Bees (Wilfred Jackson, 1932)

Dear White People (Justin Simien, 2014)

In My Father's House (Ricki Stern & Anne Sundberg, 2015)

Treasure Planet (Ron Clements & Jim Musker, 2002)

Young ship’s mate Jim Hawkins (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his pet Morph seek help from robot Martin Short to find a treasure hidden on a planet on which he was left behind to protect.
Cantinflas (Sebastian del Toro, 2014)

Smokey and the Bandit II (Hal Needham, 1980)

This Land Is Mine (Jean Renoir, 1943)

The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)

Wall Street broker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) tries to zero in on the Holiest of Holies of his wife Margot Robbie.
Bad Influence (Curtis Hanson, 1990)

+
Planes, Trains & Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987)

The Detective (Gordon Douglas, 1968)

Johnny Goes Home (No Director Listed, 1982)

Comedian/talk show host Johnny Carson returns to his hometown of Norfolk, Nebraska, to see what’s changed. Here he “attends” his high school with five of his alumni friends and practices his penmanship with his elementary school teacher, Miss Gordon.

Sergeant Rutledge +

Cop

The Devil, Probably +

La Libertad -

Zero de Conduite

College

Men, Women & Children (Jason Reitman, 2014)

+
Smokey and the Bandit (Hal Needham, 1977)

-
Forty Boys and a Song (Irving Applebaum, 1941)

+
Starting Over (Alan J. Pakula, 1979)

+

Insecure teacher Burt Reynolds tries to recover from his divorce by being more forthcoming to his next love (Jill Clayburgh).
The American Dreamer (Lawrence Schiller & L.M. Kit Carson, 1971)

’71 (Yann Demange, 2014)

The Song (Richard Ramsey, 2014)

Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000)

Imperfect Mexican policeman Benicio Del Toro gets involved with corrupt government officials and seeks a way out.
From Mexico with Love (Jimmy Nickerson, 2009)

Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell, 2010)

Tell (J.M.R. Luna, 2014)

+
The Water Diviner (Russell Crowe, 2014)

Australian farmer Russell Crowe travels to Turkey to find the remains of his three sons killed years before at Gallipoli.
An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey, 1957)

Batman (Leslie H. Martinson, 1966)

+
Romantic Comedy (Arthur Hiller, 1983)

-
The Firm (Sydney Pollack, 1993)

+

Lawyer Tom Cruise escapes from a dangerous meeting with his own law firm.
Bloodbrothers (Robert Mulligan, 1978)

Friday Foster (Arthur Marks, 1975)

Black Mama White Mama (Eddie Romero, 1973)

Radio Days (Woody Allen, 1987)

While Joe (Seth Green) stays by the sink, Uncle Abe (Josh Mostel) eats his fish this way so his wife won’t have to fillet it. Meanwhile in pre-(and post-)Pearl Harbor Rockaway Beach, everybody’s obsessed with what’s on the radio.