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This is one of the first movies that converted me from being a "huge movie fan" to sliding down the rabbit-hole of cinema. Maybe the first, I think I've often said it was the first.
About 15 years ago I bought Roger Ebert's original "The Great Movies" and decided to start reading about and watching the films therein and this was the first one I picked. And it absolutely changed the way I watched and felt about movies. It had been brewing for a long time but this just happened to be the event horizon.
I initially gave it a 9/10, so I didn't have quite the same experience as you did with it, but a couple more viewings bumped it up to a 10/10. The mysterious characters, the low-key suspense, and the subtlety resonated with me in the best way possible. I haven't seen many of Melville's other films, but I've loved everything I've seen from him so far (Army of Shadows and Le Cercle Rouge).
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I'm planning to double feature This Gun For Hire and Le Samourai for my friends next Noirvember. Pretty excited at the prospect.





Re-watch. A classic of Swedish Cinema.
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Hand of God (2021) - 6/10. The movie does have it moments. The cheeky humour that is very delightful. The camerawork is stunning. Kind of takes a leaf out of Call Me By Your Name in the choosing beguiling Naples backdrop. As for the story, it's just a mish-mash of events and a boy going through it set in the year Maradona signed for Napoli. Nothing to write home about. Oscar winner... No for me.
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Victim of The Night
I initially gave it a 9/10, so I didn't have quite the same experience as you did with it, but a couple more viewings bumped it up to a 10/10. The mysterious characters, the low-key suspense, and the subtlety resonated with me in the best way possible. I haven't seen many of Melville's other films, but I've loved everything I've seen from him so far (Army of Shadows and Le Cercle Rouge).
Another thing about it was that it was my first French New Wave film and even though I wasn't looking for it, I was honestly just going to watch the movie and react, I could immediately see the influence that it likely had (whether it was specifically this one or others like it). I thought, "Oh, so THIS is where all that comes from. Before any similar American film I can think of." So then it was not only watching "Great" movies, but watching foreign movies, watching movies of all these different eras, paying attention to things they might be pioneering and so forth. That was the change Le Samourai brought about for me.



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I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I think it was PT Anderson attempt at an Altman film and I do think he nailed it. The big thing Anderson did was cast a bunch of family members of celebrities and a number of inside jokes.
I thought Magnolia was his attempt at an Altman film. Maybe he thought it was worth attempting twice.




Enter Nowhere (2011, Jack Heller)

The 6.5 rating on IMDB is patently ludicrous — I thought it was really bad, especially the second half where the twists (horribly predictable btw) start unraveling in the most ridiculously anticlimactic fashion you can imagine. The movie gives itself away too early, and once it does, all interest is gone. I almost stopped watching at that point but then thought, "Ah whatever let's see how this ends." Conclusion? When you're massively overreliant on a plot that is this silly and far-fetched to begin with, you've got to at least have some directorial chops / vision to make it work. This film is basically a tutorial on how not to make a mindbender movie. Don't waste your time on this - watch something like Coherence, Triangle or Timecrimes instead (all incomparably better).

And yes, Clint Eastwood's son, Scott Eastwood, is in this movie - he plays one of the three lead characters.





Hand of God (2021) - 6/10. The movie does have it moments. The cheeky humour that is very delightful. The camerawork is stunning. Kind of takes a leaf out of Call Me By Your Name in the choosing beguiling Naples backdrop. As for the story, it's just a mish-mash of events and a boy going through it set in the year Maradona signed for Napoli. Nothing to write home about. Oscar winner... No for me.
I thought it was incredible. It's touching. It's a loose biopic of the director - so when you see what he went through it shows how difficult it must have been for him to make this movie. (Which he did on a whim in lockdown as his other planned film got shelved due to logistics problems)

8.5/10



'Westfront 1918' (1930)
Dir.: Georg Wilhelm Pabst


Pioneering film depicting the harrowing insanity of World War One - Pabst's first talkie, it should be in more people's 'best war film' lists but for some reason it isn't well recognized, despite being similar to 'All Quiet on the Western front' in that it's told from the perspective of German soldiers. Maybe it's because there is no solid plot and it is more of a collection of narratives.

The battles and trench scenes are stunning though. The depth of field of some of the shots is incredible with barbed wire at front of shot and explosions at rear, and Kubrick must have taken some influence from this before shooting Paths of Glory.

Recommended

8.8/10




THE CONSEQUENCES OF FEMINISM
(1906, Guy-Blaché)



"A gender-equal society would be one where the word ‘gender’ does not exist: where everyone can be themselves." --Gloria Steinem

Gender roles are established by society to sorta tell people how to act, speak, dress, and conduct themselves based upon their assigned sex. For example, men work, while women stay home and clean and cook, and if everybody behaves as is expected, there is no harm done. But what if roles were reversed?

Pioneer director Alice Guy-Blaché explores that in this 1906 short film, which features a series of scenes in which men and women roles are reversed. This results in a lot of funny and shocking interactions, primarily because we're not used to see the tables turned; men ironing and cleaning, and women lounging on the couch or fighting in a bar.

I thought this was a really clever and witty short film. It's amazing how many of the things we see in it are still relevant, so I can't imagine how much of a cultural shock it would've been back in 1906. Not necessarily for *what* people are doing, but for *who* is doing it. Let's hope for a world where we don't have to be shocked or surprised by these.

Grade:
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'Westfront 1918' (1930)
Dir.: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
It's quite incredible how well did Pabst embrace sound. He was using it well right from the very beginning, and, what's more important, the incorporation of sound didn't weaken the visual splendor of his films or his elaborate camera work. Okay, he never made another film quite as visually spellbinding as Pandora's Box, but maybe he didn't have to.

Westfront 1918 is special. A to-the-wall anti-war masterpiece reaching the heights of All Quiet on the Western Front. Now THAT'S something. They've been making anti-war films at least since the beginning of the First World War (Alfred Machin's aptly named Damn the War! or Abel Gance's masterpiece J'Accuse are just two examples), and there's a good reason why and why then, but even if you do not want to get into the whys, the sheer brilliance of the pre-40s anti-war film is a sight to behold. Interestingly enough, after the Second World War, it was no other than the Japanese that made several incredible anti-war masterpieces.

Back to Pabst, Comradeship is another great one to check out. Crazy to think only 9 years later Germans invaded France.

And another thing worth mentioning, Pabst's silent The White Hell of Pitz Palu is mentioned and featured in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. It's a great late Berg film, a must-see from the genre next to the films of Arnold Fanck.
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It's quite incredible how well did Pabst embrace sound. He was using it well right from the very beginning, and, what's more important, the incorporation of sound didn't weaken the visual splendor of his films or his elaborate camera work. Okay, he never made another film quite as visually spellbinding as Pandora's Box, but maybe he didn't have to.

Westfront 1918 is special. A to-the-wall anti-war masterpiece reaching the heights of All Quiet on the Western Front. Now THAT'S something. They've been making anti-war films at least since the beginning of the First World War (Alfred Machin's aptly named Damn the War! or Abel Gance's masterpiece J'Accuse are just two examples), and there's a good reason why and why then, but even if you do not want to get into the whys, the sheer brilliance of the pre-40s anti-war film is a sight to behold. Interestingly enough, after the Second World War, it was no other than the Japanese that made several incredible anti-war masterpieces.

Back to Pabst, Comradeship is another great one to check out. Crazy to think only 9 years later Germans invaded France.

And another thing worth mentioning, Pabst's silent The White Hell of Pitz Palu is mentioned and featured in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. It's a great late Berg film, a must-see from the genre next to the films of Arnold Fanck.
Yeah Comderade ship will be the next Pabst I check out. They didn't heed the warning this film gave. I suppose it was banned, but still.



PIERRETTE'S ESCAPADES
(1900, Guy-Blaché)



"Life is about using the whole box of crayons" --RuPaul

A simple, but beautiful short film from Alice Guy-Blaché. In this one, a young woman seems to reject the advances of a young man, and ends up happy and dancing with a female harlequin.

Considering that it was made more than 100 years ago, the film uses some beautiful hand-coloring techniques that really make the colors pop, most notably the woman's pink dress and the harlequin's green suit. It is a testament to the early silent film era's attempt to use "more crayons" than they were given to with black and white.

But it also seems to be a call for diversity and acceptance, as far as the female character goes. A young woman that refuses to do what's expected of her, and chooses an "escapade" instead, but one that makes her ultimately happy.

Grade: N/A



Alive (1993) -


The plane crash in the opening is very intense and a great way to start off one of the most harrowing survival stories in history. It sucked me right into the film and it took some time for its effect to wear off. As the film went on though, it began to lose my engagement and I wasn't able to get back into it. In spite of all the hurdles the survivors went through, I strangely felt like I was at a distance from the proceedings. Looking up the plane crash, I learned that the survivors were stuck in the mountains for 72 days before they were rescued. While I'm sure this must have been very difficult, I didn't feel the passage of time while watching the film. I felt that the actors' bodies, faces, and eyes looked way too healthy for them to have faced over two months of near-starvation. When a title card late in the film said "Day 60", it didn't feel like they were there for 60 days. They looked about the same as they did in the opening scene. As for some other aspects of the film, the acting is fine. Nothing special per se and there's some hammy bits here and there, but I did enjoy Ethan Hawke's performance as Nando since he started off the ordeal in really bad shape, but gradually got better as the film went on to the point that he was the most resourceful member of the group. Overall though, I was left cold by this film since the potential it showed in its first act was ultimately wasted.