Movie Tab II

The Dark Knight: My son wanted to watch this the other night. Unfortunately it keeps going down in my estimation each time I watch it. Still the best comic movies have to offer though. I could probably watch that bank robbery and the 18 wheeler scene 100 times in a row.

The 39 Steps: Going to continue to make my way through unwatched Hitch. Certainly not a horrible chase film but not a great one for me either. The scene on the cobble stone bridge is just ridiculously bad in my opinion. I really like the first 20 minutes of this.



Hail, Caesar: Not a Coen film that doesn't get smarter and funnier for me every time I watch it. Still pretty sure this one will sit in that second tier of their films for me but I laughed a lot this time and it really moved. Half a dozen fantastic scenes.

Le Silence De La Mer: Melville continues to impress even if I do think I have already seen the best of him. Really good cinematography and dialogue. One of those films that you know you would have loved if you were alive in a certain time and place. Look at that first shot of the antagonist, beautiful.



La La Land: Just stunning. Definitely cements its place as a new favorite on my second viewing. I love the writing and the performances. Gosling became my favorite comedic actor last year. Almost all the songs are fantastic. Audition made me drop tear...again.

The Lost City Of Z: A really solid film. I loved the last third. Some problems for me though. Didn't give a very good sense of scope. The cinematography was way too dark.



Under Capricorn: Very bland film. I think underneath these characters there is some interesting themes to explore but the film never has any bite. Very strange coming from Hitch. Maybe the first film of his I have seen that I would have had no clue was his outside of the opening credits.

The Ox-Bow Incident: I love the story arc. Nothing is done poorly but nothing is really exceptional either. I really don't have much to say past that. I like it but it will probably fall short of my 40's list.



The Squid And The Whale: This is one of the best written movies of all time in my opinion. I couldn't love the sharpness of the script more. Such an interesting look at an upper class Manhattan family. Perfectly cast and shot, which becomes even more remarkable when you watch some of the extras on the Criterion release. A perfect storm of a film. I am becoming a Baumbach fan.

Guardian Of The Galaxy Volume 2: This was a huge disappointment. Me and my buddy just simply arrived at they were trying way too hard. There is a joke every minute and I laughed once. The characters are still there so I want to see it again before I rate it lower but the writing was so bland this time. Baby Groot is a big swing and a miss. We also guessed how they would handle Groot's teen years before watching it. The action is inconsequential as per usual. Bummer a-holes.

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Letterboxd

Les misérables (1934) -
Altered States (1980) -
Астенический синдром [The Asthenic Syndrome] (1989) -
TRON (1982) -
Loin du Vietnam [Far From Vietnam] (1967) -
Amarcord (1973) -
The Love Witch (2016) -
The Blood Beast Terror [Blood Beast from Hell] (1968) -
Lettre d'un cinéaste à sa fille [Letter From a Filmmaker to His Daughter] (2000) -
Tutti i colori del buio [They're Coming to Get You] (1972) -
Opera [Terror at the Opera] (1987) -
エキサイティング・エロ　熱い肌 [Exciting Eros: Hot Skin] (1986) -
Chikan densha: Chinchin hassha [Groper Train: Wedding Capriccio] (1984) -
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) -
I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale [Torso] (1973) -
La peau douce [The Soft Skin] (1964) -
This Sporting Life (1963) -
Hélas pour moi [Oh Woe Is Me] (1993) -

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Whity (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971)

Preacher’s Kid (Stan Foster, 2010)

Driving Lessons (Jeremy Brock, 2006)

Viva Villa! (Jack Conway, 1934)

Wife Catherine DeMille [one of many] keeps an eye on lusty Mexican hero Pancho Villa (Wallace Beery).
A Good Woman (Mike Barker, 2005)

Only the Strong (Sheldon Lettich, 1993)

Under the Same Moon (Patricia Riggen, 2008)

Scum (Alan Clarke, 1979)

An indictment of the British borstal system begins with three offenders (Alrick Riley, Julian Firth & Ray Winstone) arriving at a hugely dysfunctional youth prison.
Revenge of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1978)

Ace the Case: Manhattan Mystery (Kevin Kaufman, 2016)

Gleaming the Cube (Graeme Clifford, 1989)

Brimstone (Martin Koolhoven, 2017)

Mysterious Dakota Fanning goes through a lot in the Old West - this time at a whorehouse where violence can rear its ugly head instantaneously.
This Is My Life (Nora Ephron, 1992)

Face of Fire (Albert Band, 1959)

Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie Davis, 1970)

Watermelon Man (Melvin van Peebles, 1970)

At the height of racial tensions, bigoted insurance agent Godfrey Cambridge has a standard suburban family [including wife Estelle Parsons], but one day his life goes to pot when he inexplicably turns black.
Aquamarine (Elizabeth Allen, 2006)

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711 Ocean Drive (Joseph M. Newman, 1950)

Cheyenne Takes Over (Ray Taylor, 1947)

The Kind Words (Shemi Zarhin, 2015)

After their mother dies, three Israeli siblings (Rotem Zissman-Cohen, Roy Assaf & Magi Azazar) learn their mother had a secret and go to France to try to learn what it is.

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

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946) -
Thieves' Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949) -
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1933) -

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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room."

American Sniper (2015)

no clue how to rate the movie

Taggart (R.G. Springsteen, 1964)

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Stander (Bronwen Hughes, 2003)

Jaws the Revenge (Joseph Sargent, 1987)

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Gifted (Marc Webb, 2017)

Guardian Chris Evans wants the best for his seven-year-old niece Mckenna Grace, who is a child math prodigy.
Heaven Is a Playground (Randall Fried, 1991)

The Garage (Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, 1920)

Empire State (Dito Montiel, 2013)

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xXx: Return of Xander Cage (D.J. Caruso, 2017)

Agent Vin Diesel, who has faked his death and is hiding in the Dominican Republic, is called back into service to locate "Pandora's Box" which causes satellites to crash at strategic places.
Best Laid Plans (Mike Barker, 1999)

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Pandorum (Christian Alpart, 2009)

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Lonesome Dove Church (Terry Miles, 2014)

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Department Q: The Absent One (Mikkel Nørgaard, 2014)

Secretary Johanne Louise Schmidt, Muslim detective Fares Fares and chief detective of the Copenhagen cold case division Nikolaj Lie Kaas come across evidence that implicates an exclusive boarding school and the police department itself.
Between the Acts at the Opera (No Director Listed, 1926)

Children of the Corn: Genesis (Joel Soisson, 2011)

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The Cariboo Trail (Edwin L. Marin, 1950)

The Crying Game (Neil Jordan,1992)

IRA member Stephen Rea vows to protect the lover (Jaye Davidson) of British soldier Forest Whitaker.
Breakin' All the Rules (Daniel Taplitz, 2004)

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Phantom of the Opera (Arthur Lubin, 1943)

Code Name: The Cleaner (Les Mayfield, 2007)

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The Trap (Srdan Golubovic, 2007)

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In post-Milosovic Serbia, a modestly-paid construction engineer (Neboja Glogovac) and his wife (Nataa Ninkovi) learn their young son (Marko Djurovic) needs a quick heart operation, and dad considers taking a murder-for-hire job to pay for it.

use this code:

[ rating ] 3 [ / rating ]

Do that, except don;t leave any spaces..and as for the number 3, as shown above, just use whatever number you rate it as, for example 1 or 2 or 2.5 or 3 or 3.5 etc..

you should get this

I thought they meant it like they didn't know what rating to give it.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) -
The Devil, Probably (Robert Bresson, 1977) -
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) -
Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951) -
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone, 1946) -
Belle de jour (Luis Bunuel, 1967) -
Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008) -
Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010) -
Enemy of the State (Tony Scott, 1998) -
Constantine (Francis Lawrence, 2005) -

One of my favorites ever!

Where are the popcorn icons? I don't see them anywhere.

Joel explained how to do them a few posts ago or see Miss Vicky's sticky guide for a comprehensive list

Got it now.

Demme, 1991





Still holds up as a gripping thriller with a couple of leads that are a blast to watch. A friend of mine hadn't seen this (!!!) so we had to get her up to speed!



Tyldum, 2016





This got slayed by most critics, as they lamented something about this film romanticizing stalkers or some such horse ****. I just don't see it that way. It's not as if they don't address the alleged stalker issues in the film, because they definitely do. Whatever. Not as bad as i had heard. Not a great film by any stretch, but far from the turd the critics would have us think this is. Works as a popcornn flick and Lawrence is always worth a watch.



Snyder, 2015





Second time seeing this, and once again it was the extended edition. I dunno man, at a couple points in the film, I was watching a sequence of cinematic creativity that the Marvel films can only dream of. This flick clearly has some issues, but I still like it quite a bit. I figured this time around, I would maybe see why everyone hates it so much, but this viewing only seemed to reinforce the notion that there is some bizarre mob-mentality conduct going on in the world at large, especially in the demographic of film critics. Suicide Squad is terrible, but this film is actually pretty damned good.



(Lee, 1995)





Aside from Lee's Do the Right Thing, which I tend to watch frequently, this is the film I have seen the most by the director. I have always liked this one, and this viewing was no different! Almost comes across as warm up for The Wire in some ways. That show definitely took a couple of beats from this film.

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I am right there with you on BVS Sedai. I might habe to check out Passengers now. Maybe I will wait till Life hit VOD and double feature it.

It seems like a lot of the negativity has to do with the greater context of Batman and Superman as established characters and how BvS effectively disregards or perverts many of their defining characteristics in order to create a supposedly mature and grounded deconstruction in line with works like Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns. The problem being that there's hardly anything to deconstruct - Superman is barely a character whose arc effectively recycles that of Dr. Manhattan (why do I care about saving the world, the only person I care about is my girlfriend, etc.), whereas this version of Batman is introduced as a worn-down vigilante who no longer cares whether or not his enemies die in the name of justice. Since these characters are the core of the film, how they develop and interact with one another has a ripple effect across the film and muddles its attempts to say something meaningful about superheroes and what they mean for the culture at large (this is exemplified where Superman is supposed to appear before the Senate and any attempt he has to explain himself is thwarted by...a jar of piss and a bomb going off. What.).

As for "sequences of cinematic creativity", that only goes so far if they barely tie into the film at large, which is a common problem with Zack Snyder's movies. He's all about creating these visually striking and instantly iconic moments without showing that much regard for how well they fit the story proper. It works if the story is simple hack-and-slash pablum like 300, but it hurt Watchmen when he played the action for slow-motion thrills in a story that was explicitly designed to downplay the coolness of superheroes. Stuff like the Knightmare sequence looks more inventive than most Marvel movies, but it's tied to a flawed narrative that limits its impact (and I'm hard-pressed to name any other moments from BvS that match it). I could tell that Snyder was referencing the ending of Excalibur in the climax, but in doing so he sets up a dramatic contrivance of Fallout 3 proportions in the process and thus renders a supposedly emotional moment strangely flat in the process.

At the very least, there's more to the hate than just "mob mentality". Since you've only seen the extended edition, I think that papers over some of the narrative cracks in the theatrical version (especially re: framing Superman with one-of-a-kind bullets), but from what I gather it still leaves the thematic approach intact and, well, can you blame people for not liking it? It's one thing if you want to take superheroes seriously, but the way in which Snyder and co. specifically do that with BvS understandably left a lot to be desired. It also raises the question as to why people would like it - the most positive professional review I saw came from Armond White, and even then he talks about how awful Christopher Nolan's Batman films were. I get that there are aspects to like about it, but as a whole it's a mess that's coming from one very off-kilter cinematic sensibility (if Snyder saying that they killed off Jimmy Olsen for fun is any indication) and I'm not inclined to think that people are wrong for completely hating it. You want some mob mentality, remember that it was the DC fans that accused reviewers of being bribed by Marvel and who made a petition to shut down Rotten Tomatoes after the DCEU movies kept getting rotten scores.

Great post Iro, and it's one of the better explanations I have read / heard about the negative reaction to BvS. I think the main reason I am tend to not fall down on that side of the argument is that have always found the idea that there is a definitive or proper version of any given comic character or group to be sort of unappealing. I understand there is a mythology attached to a character like Superman, one that has existed for decades, but personally, I have always enjoyed the stories that sort of kick that stuff to the curb. This goes for really any comic, I think. I don't read comics these days, except for the occasional graphic novel lent by a friend or something along those lines, but back when I did read, I adored stuff like Alan Moore's What Ever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, or even stuff that sort of deconstructed the idea of Superman, but wasn't a bonafide Superman book, such as Kurt Busiak's Astro City. Expanding to other material, there was Miller's Dark Knight, which I think Snyder's Batman resembles quite a bit. I like Grant Morrison's take on the X-Men in the late 90's, as well.

That said, I understand that some folks would take Snyder's versions of these characters as a sort of trashing of the material, and I an unsure if Snyder's sort of polemical comments about the characters are his genuine feelings about the material or a knee-jerk reaction to bad critical press. I guess I don't take these things as seriously as some; I don't care about canon, I don't hold the material or the characters as sacred. I just ask myself if I was entertained instead of bored or nonplussed when I watch a film. If Snyder injects some politic about fascist superheroes, as has been mentioned by some critics in regards to this film, I may ponder that stuff for a few minutes, but I always remind myself that I am watching what amounts to a fantasy, and in the end, that stuff can only be explored so far in material like this. My point is - in the end, I am looking to be entertained, and I find BvS entertaining.

It also looks really good.

True, but if a film is going to kick established canon to the curb then it means that the new stuff has to hold up on its own - a lot of the critiques of BvS touch on its issues when taken as "just a movie", such as the weirdly slow pacing, approach to narrative, or the many half-baked concepts it tries to cram in (including rushing the set-up for Wonder Woman and Justice League). Assessing a given movie as a fantasy is also an issue when you have to consider what kind of worldview/s either inform this particular fantasy or find it appealing - how often do you ever think about why you find entertainment in the movies that you watch?

At least it provokes interesting discussion. Too bad the same can't be said for Suicide Squad.

Quite a bit! It really depends on the film and to a greater extent, and also what sort of mind-set I am in when I sit down to watch something. If I want to get into something a bit philosophical or life-exploring, for instance, I don't think comic films are going to spring to mind before something else; in fact, I Might just read instead! In regards to films, though, I guess you can distill it down to the old popcorn movie argument. Sometimes I just want to sort of kick back and munch on some snacks, enjoy a film that looks great and doesn't require too much unpacking. BvS qualifies in that regard. I don't bother drilling down into something like that, or any of the Marvel films, even though I do find many of them a fun diversion.

Recent Watches:
A Serious Man (Coen Brothers, 2009)-

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Casting Jon Benet (K. Green, 2017)-

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