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Women will be your undoing, Pépé
Same here. I thought S1 was the better one. But I think this one surpasses S2.
Started watching this earlier tonight, saw the first three, and agree with your high position for Bad Traveling. Amazing bit of high sea horror, that.
Pretty intrigued to see the remainder. The high quality and variety of style is a definite constant for this series.
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Started watching this earlier tonight, saw the first three, and agree with your high position for Bad Traveling. Amazing bit of high sea horror, that.
I especially liked how they
WARNING: spoilers below
portrayed Torrin. He showed all the attributes of a villain. Merciless, deceitful and cunning. But it was all in service of a noble cause. That really appealed to me for some reason.



Death on the Nile (Kenneth Branagh, 2022)


Decent enough popcorn entertainment. The first half drags a bit but I was surprised by how effective - and even slightly emotional - the finale was.

Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)


Really solid classic Hitchcock thriller, including one of his most suspenseful sequences.

Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998)


Interesting story and great casting, Clooney and Lopez are electric together. Soderbergh's direction is just so underwhelming for me, like shot on a cheap digital camera, nothing memorable.

12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995)


Knew what to expect having seen La Jetée but still found myself immersed and engaged, Gilliam a really good fit for the story.

The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)


Knew I was not going to enjoy this after about five minutes. Camera move, camera zoom in, camera zoom out, cut, cut, cut. Couldn't enjoy it and I also found the political messages confusing especially when bookended between two overt statements that don't match the nuance of what's in between.

Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941)


Really enjoyable Hawks comedy but a little overlong and not quite at the level of Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday.

A Farewall to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932)


Incredible film, so many beautifully shot scenes. The war montage in the second half is almost a masterpiece in itself. Simple yet stunning, very moving.

The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston, 1975)


Really fun good old-fashioned adventure made well.

Let The Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)


Not really a horror film, but instead a really quite sad coming-of-age romance sort of film. Really well done.

The Batman (Matt Reeves, 2022)


Really enjoyed this. Casting is absolutely spot on, easy to say now but almost choice-for-choice who I would choose for each role. Kravitz is the star of the show, love the score, falls down a bit by a formulaic third act. Looking forward to more. Done a review for this for a local magazine which I'll post soon.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (Jon Watts, 2021)


Love Spider-Man 2 but was trepidatious following the public gushing over this and my fears were confirmed. But for nostalgia, there's not much here. Once well-written characters are reduced to cartoon, the plot is flimsy as hell and the Marvel humour/zeitgest really isn't for me. The ending and logic of almost all of it made no sense to me either.

They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)


Another awesome John Carpenter film, the man just makes cool movies. Had a lot of fun with this, despite the absolutely ridiculous fight scene.

On the Town (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1949)


Really fun musical but the plot is a bit simple and repetitive, not reaching the heights of something like Singin' in the Rain.

The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)


Incredible performances that feels full of feeling from the off, captures sensual moments in such a powerful way. I'll have to watch more Campion because I enjoyed Power of the Dog too.

The Northman (Robert Eggers, 2022)


Starts off great and I was expecting like some Viking epic but it really isn't that. Was a little bit disappointed to be honest, there's an hour in this that's so repetitive and dull. So much opportunity for excitement, romance etc. but instead we get a really subdued Hamlet on a farm.

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (Richard Linklater, 2022)


Linklater has made a career capturing the nuances of the human condition and like Waking Life which explored human consciousness and dreaming, Apollo uses animation joyfully to illustrate the power of memory. The film works as a moving examination of how and why we remember experiences in our life as well as a playful history lesson in Western culture that us grown-ups can’t help but yearn for. Loved it.

Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991)


Enjoyable enough film with interesting characters but not beyond that in terms of filmmaking. Definitely influenced Tarantino a lot.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Jason Reitman, 2021)


Just unbelievably dull, didn't find it interesting at all and didn't laugh once. Sorry fans.

Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986)


First-time watch in preparation for Maverick. Didn't have high expectations and knew it was gonna be pure cheese but I really enjoyed it. Why show a story in two and half hours in nuance when you can get your point across with a few scenes and some extremely on-the-nose song choices? The film oozes style and Tom Cruise is awesome. Not ashamed.

The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946)


The plot is a lot more simple and restrained than other Welles works I've seen, almost works as like a companion piece to Shadow of a Doubt. Elevated by Welles confident handling of direction, in particular the lighting and editing.

The Souvenir: Part II (Joanna Hogg, 2021)


Absolute adore The Souvenir which I found incredibly moving but this was disappointing. Tries to be too clever and came across as cold and artificial to me. Interesting enough to be decent overall and had some really creative sequences, but didn't pack any punch.
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Kodachrome (2017)

This was a good (if predictable) romp through an estranged father, that's a renowned photographer, and his record executive son. They are on a trip to have his last photos developed by a specific technique as Ed Harris' character is dying. A decent watch and some of the lines by Ben about the touching nature and stopping time are very well delivered. Could have done with better actors beside Harris though and less love interest.




Sonic 2 (2022)


Knuckles and Tails were a cool addition, but the movie storyline definitely took a backseat to cheap jokes and bad writing. The first movie almost overused contemporary humor, and this one definitely does while some of it even gets recycled (another The Rock joke...). What kid/adult wants to see an actual love story in this world? I could go without seeing another dance battle scene in movies for the next 5 years as well. My daughter liked it enough I'll admit though.



Women will be your undoing, Pépé
I especially liked how they
WARNING: spoilers below
portrayed Torrin. He showed all the attributes of a villain. Merciless, deceitful and cunning. But it was all in service of a noble cause. That really appealed to me for some reason.
whole heartedly agree.




Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6554763

Sonatine - (1993)

What felt like your typical gangster film takes a hard left at the midway point when Takeshi Kitano's Murakawa holes up in a beachside safe house with a few of his Yakuza buddies - the men, ostensibly rock hard assassins who torture and maim, start to loosen up and play with the joyful regard of schoolkids. For the first time, Murakawa seems happy and content - and it's this revelation of what his real life has become compared to this happy interlude that messes the most with his mind. I spent large portions of Sonatine being unimpressed, but when I saw the whole I thought it very clever and feel compelled to watch it again. Sometimes you just need to know what a film is saying before you can enjoy it from start to finish - and as such I think Sonatine will reward a rewatch very much. Who knows, maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way, but I find all that's good in Sonatine completely wrapped in Murakawa and what's going on inside his head. This is an example of going into a film blind being a disadvantage - sometimes it rewards me with surprises, not knowing where the story will go, but sometimes it means it takes me longer to pick up on what I should really be focusing on. I was going to give this film a rating a few points lower than what I have, but after it finished and I thought about it, I actually became excited about it - despite not being so happy while watching it.

8/10

Foreign Language Countdown films seen : 89/100



I really liked Nightmare Alley though. I probably harped on too long about it's negative points, while the positives really outweighed them when summed up.
It's a wonderful soft/hard edged film that moved me anyway. Assassins, boss, "soldiers"...all acting like schoolkids.



Victim of The Night
Kodachrome (2017)

This was a good (if predictable) romp through an estranged father, that's a renowned photographer, and his record executive son. They are on a trip to have his last photos developed by a specific technique as Ed Harris' character is dying. A decent watch and some of the lines by Ben about the touching nature and stopping time are very well delivered. Could have done with better actors beside Harris though and less love interest.

Did Olsen have a significant role?
I'm really impressed by her and am on the lookout for films with her that I haven't seen but if she doesn't have any real work to do in this I'll probably keep looking.



Victim of The Night

This is an historical dramatization of a brief period in the life of Robert Roy MacGregor (Liam Neeson). It is highly fictionalized and essentially beatifies MacGregor while making the villains so despicable you expect to see them tying damsels to train tracks and it's just too bad they have no mustaches to twirl.
And yet, this movie is, simply, quite good. It has all the ingredients, an historical drama, made in the 90s no less, that pays little attention to facts and history, to be crap. And yet it is not. It has actually been one of my favorite historical dramas since its release, a film that really stood out in its time.
In an instance where my hero, Roger Ebert, and I agree beat for beat, note for note on a film, he wrote this at the time, "This is a splendid, rousing historical adventure, an example of what can happen when the best direction, acting, writing and technical credits are brought to bear on what might look like shopworn material", further recognizing the wonderful performance here by Tim Roth as the film's Darth Vader character (with John Hurt's Marquess of Montrose as The Emperor), Archibald Cunningham. More on that later.
The plot is fairly simple. Rob Roy MacGregor borrows 1,000 pounds from the regional gentry, James Graham, Marquess of Montrose (Hurt), to establish his clan and the people he protects as middle-class cattle farmers rather than just poor people. But, Montrose's young nephew, the sociopathic gay-blade, Archie, steals the money to cover his own outlandish lifestyle, blaming MacGregor for the theft. So Rob is on the run and the unsympathetic (to say the least) Montrose appoints Archie to flush him out and hunt him down by any means necessary. And Archie's means are horrific, leading to a hatred between the two men that is the real grease of this film.
Almost everything about this movie works. It is beautifully shot on location in Scotland and very effectively directed to give enough action to keep the audience hooked but focusing on the intrigue of the characters' personalities and the their dealings and double-dealings. But the stars here are the stars. The film is wonderfully acted across the board and with individual standout performances. This is actually my favorite performance of Neeson's career. John Hurt is magnificent as the soulless Montrose, really dominates the screen whenever he's on (as usual).




Jessica Lange gives a deep, lived-in performance as Mary MacGregor and, while her primary function in this film is to support and motivate her man (a crime I'm willing to forgive given that the film is about that man and everyone is really there to tell his story), she delivers with such strength, Lange will make you wish you were married to Mary MacGregor. Brian Cox, in the first role I ever saw him in, slithers around conniving and scheming and generally just being wonderfully awful. Actually, Andrew Keir is really just perfect as Montrose's rival, John Cambell, the Duke of Argyll (seen in the clip above).
But the show-stopper, and make no mistake, is Tim Roth as the truly despicable dandy-swordsman, Archie Campbell. You will f*cking hate him by the end of this movie and you will cheer for Rob during their final confrontation, which happens to be one of my favorite duels in cinema history. Ebert called his performance "crucial" to the film and the final duel "one of the great action sequences in movie history". And he was not wrong. As I've said, the duel is one of my favorites I've ever seen. And Roth won the BAFTA and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at The Academy Awards.


All in all, this is a film that I could not take my eyes from on a night when I had not planned to watch a film at all and I re-watched several moments for the just delicious performances and sharp-as-rapiers line-deliveries. The rare historical drama/adventure and 1990s film that really delivers all around on what could have been formulaic and forgettable. I don't rate films, but I recommend Rob Roy.



SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER

https://boxd.it/2Rvq4N

A gritty misremembered classic that’s basically when Mean Streets met disco.

4.5/5





Dazed and Confused, 1993

This film follows about a dozen young people on the last day of school in a small Texas town in 1976. Special focus is given to Pink (Jason London), who is being pressured to give up his "loser" friends and focus on football, and to Mitch (Wiley Wiggins), a freshman who is getting his first real taste of high school life from hazing to partying.

Something that this film does to tremendous success is show the way that young people, even the "nice ones", can be kind of a mess. And therefore their social interactions are a series of people with their own issues bouncing off of one another. High school is a very formative time for many people, and that era of finding/refining an identity can be both exhilarating and fraught. There are a few outright villains--like Ben Affleck as egocentric bully O'Bannion or Parker Posey as mean girl Darla---but for the most part the characters feel like a realistic range of teenagers, complete with their own insecurities and hopes.

What surprised me the most about the film was how sad I found huge swaths of it. This is largely maybe because I was expecting more of a comedy. But the first third of the film, with a heavy emphasis on the violent and/or humiliating hazing that the seniors inflict on the freshmen, really depressed me. "Someone did this to me when I was a freshman, and you'll do it when you're a senior" one of the senior girls tells freshman Julie (Catherine Morris), as the girl is being called a slut, b*tch, c*ck tease, and having her clothing covered with ketchup, mustard, raw eggs, and flour. One of the senior boys makes a freshman girl open her mouth, and then asks her if she spits or swallows, something his friends just laugh off. I think that part of what bothered me was the film's portrayal of these rituals---the hazing of the freshmen boys involves dangerous car chases and being hit with paddles---as something that the kids with good character just get through as a rite of passage. We don't see the kids who don't get over it, or for whom this kind of hazing is actually just a socially permitted form of cruelty against kids who will never actually be accepted into the herd.

There are abundant memorable supporting performances. Matthew McConaughey as a long-graduated man who still hangs out with high schoolers. Adam Goldberg plays one part of an outsider trio who chafes against the rituals of the popular senior class. Milla Jovovich and Joey Lauren Adams are also on hand as senior girls.

Despite some big moments like the car chases, a brawl, and a sequence of the freshmen boys getting revenge on O'Bannion, I most enjoyed some of the smaller moments like the symbolism of an empty keg, a moment of awkward flirting between Julie and Mitch, or some gentle sparks flying between a senior who is watching the freshman hazing and one of the girls being hazed.

I enjoyed this film, though I was definitely ready for it to be done by the end. Teenagers are emotionally exhausting to be around, and this movie certainly captures that! I really appreciated the way that it showed how character is built not mainly through grand gestures, but through small moments of kindness or defiance.




Victim of The Night
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER

https://boxd.it/2Rvq4N

A gritty misremembered classic that’s basically when Mean Streets met disco.

4.5/5
Yep. What a misunderstood movie.



Victim of The Night


Dazed and Confused, 1993

This film follows about a dozen young people on the last day of school in a small Texas town in 1976. Special focus is given to Pink (Jason London), who is being pressured to give up his "loser" friends and focus on football, and to Mitch (Wiley Wiggins), a freshman who is getting his first real taste of high school life from hazing to partying.

Something that this film does to tremendous success is show the way that young people, even the "nice ones", can be kind of a mess. And therefore their social interactions are a series of people with their own issues bouncing off of one another. High school is a very formative time for many people, and that era of finding/refining an identity can be both exhilarating and fraught. There are a few outright villains--like Ben Affleck as egocentric bully O'Bannion or Parker Posey as mean girl Darla---but for the most part the characters feel like a realistic range of teenagers, complete with their own insecurities and hopes.

What surprised me the most about the film was how sad I found huge swaths of it. This is largely maybe because I was expecting more of a comedy. But the first third of the film, with a heavy emphasis on the violent and/or humiliating hazing that the seniors inflict on the freshmen, really depressed me. "Someone did this to me when I was a freshman, and you'll do it when you're a senior" one of the senior girls tells freshman Julie (Catherine Morris), as the girl is being called a slut, b*tch, c*ck tease, and having her clothing covered with ketchup, mustard, raw eggs, and flour. One of the senior boys makes a freshman girl open her mouth, and then asks her if she spits or swallows, something his friends just laugh off. I think that part of what bothered me was the film's portrayal of these rituals---the hazing of the freshmen boys involves dangerous car chases and being hit with paddles---as something that the kids with good character just get through as a rite of passage. We don't see the kids who don't get over it, or for whom this kind of hazing is actually just a socially permitted form of cruelty against kids who will never actually be accepted into the herd.

There are abundant memorable supporting performances. Matthew McConaughey as a long-graduated man who still hangs out with high schoolers. Adam Goldberg plays one part of an outsider trio who chafes against the rituals of the popular senior class. Milla Jovovich and Joey Lauren Adams are also on hand as senior girls.

Despite some big moments like the car chases, a brawl, and a sequence of the freshmen boys getting revenge on O'Bannion, I most enjoyed some of the smaller moments like the symbolism of an empty keg, a moment of awkward flirting between Julie and Mitch, or some gentle sparks flying between a senior who is watching the freshman hazing and one of the girls being hazed.

I enjoyed this film, though I was definitely ready for it to be done by the end. Teenagers are emotionally exhausting to be around, and this movie certainly captures that! I really appreciated the way that it showed how character is built not mainly through grand gestures, but through small moments of kindness or defiance.




Yep. What a misunderstood movie.
Imagine making THAT movie and all anyone takes away from it is dance pointing to the sky.



Victim of The Night
Imagine making THAT movie and all anyone takes away from it is dance pointing to the sky.
That's pretty much all anyone did. I mean, that came out when I was a kid and I am pretty much the only person I know who doesn't think it's the silly disco movie with John Travolta.
I mean, to them it may as well be Roller Boogie or Xanadu or Breakin' for that matter.
And I am left just standing there going, "Aaalllll Pacino! At-ti-ca! At-ti-ca!"



Victim of The Night
I think that Siskel really sums up how I felt about it.

Which is not a criticism of the movie, just that there was more melancholy to it than I expected.
That's kinda what I love about it.





Chan is Missing, 1982

Jo (Wood Moy) and his nephew Steve (Marc Hayashi) are two men living in Chinatown and hoping to get a taxi license. A man named Chan took their money to purchase the license, but then disappears. Jo, with help from Steve, sets out to track down Chan and solve the mystery of his disappearance. Along the way they encounter various characters and explore the politics between Chinese immigrants and the Chinese-American community.

I should really just throw away what I think I know about movies, because they are misconceptions like 90% of the time. I had avoided this film because I thought it was sort of a gritty, depressing film (perhaps misled by how often I'd seen the word "noir" applied to it, and my experience with noir-inspired films in the 80s is that they tend to be downers). Instead, this is more of a comedy/drama/thriller, with an emphasis on how the investigation uncovers the range of identities and characters within the Chinese/Chinese-American community.

Moy and Hayashi make for a fantastic set of protagonists, and even their dynamic speaks to something generational and different within a community. Steve feels far more Americanized than Jo, speaking with a distinct New York patter to the extent that one character even asks him "Who do you think you are? Richard Pryor?". Jo becomes the central character as the film goes on, and through his investigations, he comes to reflect on what it means to be Chinese-American, even noting that his desire for the mystery to have a neat solution is an American trait, and that if he were "Chinese enough" he would be able to accept the unknowns of the situation.

As a mystery itself, the film hinges on the politics of immigrants living together in a similar space, when their beliefs are very different. The mystery frequently comes back to an incident that took place at a parade, where supporters of China clashed with supporters of Taiwan. This conflict may have even led to a murder, a newspaper clipping of which feels like the film's first real clue. As Jo questions different people who knew Chan, he encounters very different perspectives on the man. One person notes his love of Mariachi music, while another bemoans the fact that he would not assimilate.

Character-wise, the film has some really excellent supporting work. While it may feel a bit too "to camera", I really appreciated a scene where a lawyer (Judy Nihei) explains why a police stop went so bad for Chan, explaining the breakdown in communication that results from how Chinese people culturally tend to respond to questions. It was interesting to hear this speech, because it was very similar to something I learned in graduate school about different cultural practices in writing and how the concept of a "logical" response is culturally relative.

Another standout is a character called Henry (Peter Wang), and someone please tell me why Peter Wang only has 6 film credits to his name. He is absolutely hilarious as a cook working in a Chinese restaurant, bemoaning the way that people order food at the restaurant. ("If one more person asks me for wonton soup, I tell them I give it to them backwards: "not now"!"). Wearing a shirt that says "Samurai Night Fever," he sings "Fry Me to the Moon" and talks about the irony of the fact that the most successful people who came over to America couldn't find work because American companies don't want Chinese engineers. But people like him who will work less prestigious jobs can do just fine.

What is fantastic about the film is the way that Jo's investigation so deftly works against stereotypes, simply by putting such a diverse range of Chinese or Chinese-American people on the screen and letting them interact. The characters are different in their politics, ages, language, and social status. All of this working against a story where, as the narrator notes, there's no point in going to the police because "at any time there are probably three guys missing called Chan."

This was a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable film. Highly recommended.




Yeah, Saturday Night Fever owns. Travolta's performance is an all timer. The music and dancing is almost beside the point (although for the record; it owns as well...except maybe "Disco Duck")