Movie Tab II

Not when you consider some of the films they decide to nominate (especially Bohemian Rhapsody, which I'd actually consider an inferior film to Vice even as I acknowledge it's more likely to win an Oscar).

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Clearly a statement by someone who doesn't understand how films get nominated for Oscars (hint: it's not all about quality).

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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019

I've seen the type of people who are part of the Academy... no offense to them, it just explains why the actual nominations are rarely surprising. So yeah, I don't take awards ceremonies seriously either.

Re-watch Jan. 2019:
High and Low 1963
Le Samouraï 1967
M 1931
They Live 1988


First time viewings Jan. 2019:
All About Eve 1950
A Man Escaped 1956
Out of the Past 1947
Sorcerer 1977
The Great Silence 1968
..and justice for all. 1979
The Verdict 1982
Manhunter 1986
The Florida Project 2017
Green Book 2018
Widows 2018
Sonatine 1993
Leave No Trace 2018
Burning Beoning 2018
First Reformed 2017
Hereditary 2018

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Re-watch Feb. 2019:
Cinema Paradiso 1988
-Reviewed- Shogun Assassin 1980
One-Eyed Jacks 1961
Unforgiven 1992
Days of Heaven 1978
The Fog 1980
The King Of Comedy 1982
The Dead Zone 1983
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 1991
Silent Running 1972

First time viewings Feb. 2019:
The Invisible Guest, Contratiempo 2016
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2018
Le Trou, The Hole 1960
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1966
Ghost World 2001
Miss Sloane 2016
The Rider 2017
The Hate U Give 2018
Shoplifters, Manbiki kazoku 2018
Blindspotting 2018
Cold War, Zimna wojna 2018
Touchez Pas au Grisbi (Hands Off The Loot) 1954
Prince of the City 1981
The Guilty, Den Skyldige 2018
Can You Ever Forgive Me 2018
Eighth Grade 2018
If Beale Street Could Talk 2018
Hearts Beat Loud 2018
Prospect 2018

Ray Romano: Right Here, Around the Corner 2019
Ken Jeong: You Complete Me, Ho 2019
The 91st Annual Academy Awards 2019

Cash on Demand (1961) -
A man eloquently robs a bank run by a snooty manager. Don’t read the IMDB synopsis; it gives away the whole plot.

The characters are multifaceted, and Andre Morell is wonderful. The story is told in what feels like real time, which gives it a Hitchcockian tension. I think this may be the only non-horror Hammer flick I’ve seen, but it seems someone forgot to tell the composer. dun dun

The Wailing (2016) –
A sort of bumbling small town policeman tries to quell an evil entity infiltrating his village. Comedic for the first hour, but gets serious and disturbing when it needs to. Loved the ending.

Far from Men (2014) –
Two men in a warring Algeria try to avoid human and natural threats during a tumultuous trek. A pretty slow pace and depressing ‘post’ sounding score give subtle moments poignancy.



The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) –
An eccentric small town with a twisted collective secret takes in a newcomer. It’s not horror or comic enough to recommend to genre fans, and not quirky enough to watch for oddness alone, but it’s not bad.



Frightmare (1974) –
A formerly committed mental patient may be having a relapse in her old age. A decent horror mystery. Not much more; not much less. Some characters are grating (by intention), but the acting can get pretty entertaining (especially from the old bat).

Seen in January Pt.2/2



It’s a very average, by-the-books biopic but I liked it a lot as it’s about a a topic I’m actually interested in. Steve Coogan’s and John C. Riley’s performances were so good. They fit into the roles so well.


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Incredibly British. I loved the characters and the story. The animation is great too, the fast-paced nature of it adds to the physical comedy.


+
Pretty strange that everyone’s calling Black Panther revolutionary for having a mainly black cast in an American movie when this movie came out way before. Another solid comedy from John Landis. I loved James Earl Jones and Arsenio Hall.


-
The more I think about this, the more I like it. It feels like a subversion of the superhero genre, even before the superhero craze became a thing. It’s very quiet compared to most superhero films, it’s mostly just talking: I don’t think I’ve ever seen that done with the genre before. Most superhero films have super-hyper-death-gods destroying cites. What does Bruce Willis do? He’s stronger than the average human and has unbreakable bones. I think what makes this film so interesting is that if there WAS superheroes in our society, this is probably what they would be, not Thor.




My third Ken Loach film and it was great. Nearly every film I’ve seen from the ‘Kitchen-Sink’ genre has been a banger. Main character’s performance was great. Something about the film just feels so ‘real’, guess that’s common with the genre though.

Also that food court scene, so sad.


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It was enjoyable, but it felt pointless; I don’t think it added anything to the ‘Unbreakable’ universe. Couldn’t Split have not been set in the same universe and just be its own standalone film? Once again James McCoy is superb in this (I’m glad we got to see more personalities). The ending felt very rushed and weird.



Not for me. The first 40 minutes were SO BORING! After that there were some cool scenes (The hands coming out of the wall), some really good spooky moments and music, but apart from that it’s just our blank-state of a main character prancing about.

Nearly every film I’ve seen so far by Polanski I found over-rated and didn't live up to the hype at all. Weird.


+?!?!??!?!
There’s a scene where a girl runs over a kids head, masturbates to a photo of it, then gets her ass burned by the main character who's voiced by a cheesy trailer narrator.

Absolutely awful, but fun.


-
I really liked Carrey’s performance, but I guess he’s always like that. I loved that karaoke scene. Even though this is a dark comedy, I thought it got REALLY dark in the second half and not in a funny way.



Lads, if you haven’t seen this, watch it now. It’s one of those “Don’t look up anything about it before seeing it” types of movies.

Short films seen in January
(I put the director/date beside them in case you wanna check them out yourself)

Playstation 2 :The Third Place (Lynch): Really cool, felt very Eraserhead-ish
Barilla Commercial (Lynch): I have no idea why Lynch made this. It’s so crazy I have to watch it every now and again because it’s so weird.
Georgia Coffee commercials (Lynch): Imagine Dale Cooper comes to your coffee shop and he says: “No thanks, I got come crappy ass packet coffee thank you very much”.
The Flying Coffer (Reiniger): Sad story.
The Secret of the Marquise (Reiniger): Cute commercial
Christmas Is Coming (Reiniger): Eh...
The Heavenly Post Office (Reiniger): EEEHHHHHHH...
Homage to Zgougou the Cat (Varda): What a nice kitty.
DoodleBug (Nolan): Cool.
The Calligrapher (Quay Bros.): I wanna see more by these dudes now.
Rated R For Nudity (Villeneuve): Kinda terrifying but I loved it.
Far Far Away Idol: Simon Cowell was the REAL villain of Shrek 2.
Men Boxing (1891): They didn’t box, incredibly disappointed.
Poor Pierrot: Interesting early attempt at animation, but it hasn’t aged well at all

Down by Law - (1986) - JIM JARMUSCH

Not much I can say. I liked it. I've always liked it, and I've liked it again and again. Just a sweet tale with semi hallucinogenic imagery. And that jail-break scene, wow! ;P

Nothing in Common - (1986) Garry Marshall

Half good, half not that good. Hanks is still in peak immature form but also shows some restraint and intensity. RIP 1986.


A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon - (1988) - William Richter

Dull, boring,.. and yet somehow captivating at the same time. It was and is a cadence to my movie watching metronome. Simulated underwear sex and Norman Rockwell style narration on the director's cut is so misleading. This is not an 80's teen romp. It's a 1960's nostalgia trip that somehow almost evades a family reconciliation, but thankfully does not..in the end.


Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot - (2018) - Gus Van Sant

Joaquin has always struck me as a capable but purposeful victim of stroke blob of meat style actor. Here he is no different. Jonah Hill adds his comedy to underwhelming effect. It's OK. It should have been magnificent, but that's what's wrong with most modern dramas. They try to be cutting edge and they fumble it all up, like a 9 year old trying to cook up 4 star cuisine.

Seen in February Pt.1


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A solid haunted house film. I liked the characters and the story was pretty cool: The second half was basically the plot to Poltergeist but told in a very unique way. I know everyone thinks this is spooky cause of all the big scares, but the stuff that scared me the most were the little stuff (Could you close the door? I don't like it when he walks around). The last two minutes were very cheesy though.


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Not as fun or action-packed as ‘Goldfinger’. I thought the main villain was very threatening, but I feel like he didn’t get much use: When you compare his fight with Bond to Bond’s fight with Oddjob in ‘Goldfinger’, the former is very lacklustre. It’s a shame because there’s lots of potential for suspense with that strong-ass metal hand.

I will give the film one thing though, it introduced me to that amazing “Three Blind Mice” song.



Another zinger from Cuarón. A slice of life drama about a housemaid, What caught my attention immediately was the miss en scéne, it’s fantastic: In the background of nearly every scene there’s tons of characters doing their own unique thing. Great performances and great characters. The B&W cinematography is lovely. The birth scene and the beach scene were very emotional for me, and I'm not that easy to get emotional.

Not as good as his other work, but to be fair it’s pretty bloody hard to top ‘Children of Men'.


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Normally this is the type of film that would bore me to tears, but there was something about it that grabbed me. Was it the characters? The performances? The shot composition? I don’t know. I’d say it has a lot more going for it thematically than ‘Through a Glass Darkly’. I thought the interpretation of Jesus’ suffering at the end was incredibly beautiful. I noticed after some later thought that First Reformed is basically a modern day remake of this, I enjoyed First Reformed more.


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I thought the comedic bits were good. A few of the more plot-centric bits were kinda boring, even though it is an interesting story.. The ending speech was incredible, still relevant today.


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I liked the first one, but after enjoying this one alot I wanna re-visit it and see if my opinions on it have changed.

I liked the direction it took and how it developed more on the idea of the 'human world'. The script is very good (If a little predictable). The comedy is great. The fast-paced animation is really fun. I loved all the little in-jokes and unexpected references to different films, and the original songs are catchy as hell.



A slick, simple thriller with a funky soundtrack. What makes this one so unique from the crowd is the depiction of the terrorists. Usually in these types of movies whenever the protagonist gives in a deal or bargain to give him some time to save the day the antagonist usually complies. In this film however, the terrorists have a no-BS policy, no bargaining whatsoever. I loved this, it makes the film so much more intense and it makes me wish more films with similar plots would do this kind of thing.



It’s obvious Lloyd Kaufman has improved on his craft because this is alot more fun and way less boring than The Toxic Avenger. Nearly every joke in this film is made to offend someone, the acting is purposefully bad, and this all adds to the terrible but hilarious script. If you’re looking for a satire on capitalism and animal cruelty, this is certainly something.

“The chicken has declared jihad on us all"



Michael Powell is an absolute master with colours. Apart from that it’s just a fun fantasy flick with some great sets and diversity considering the year it was made.


+
Never heard about the act of ‘free soloing’ before this. Alex is a really interesting person, whenever there’s no climbing scenes were shown his life and discussions about climbing, all very interesting. The theory that he has Aspergers makes sense: He’s kinda monotone and witty, he’s emotionally distant from his girlfriend, and he has an avid interest in a specific subject (Free soloing). The climbing scenes are amazing: The cinematography is so good and the fact that you’re watching real life footage of someone doing this is astounding. The fact that a human being can do that makes me proud to be one.

February, 2019 movies watched-

The Descent (2005) Repeat viewing - One of the best horrors of the last 20 years.

Boy Erased (2018) - Hedges is a stud and the story has real meaning.

Beautiful Boy (2018) Emotionally effective.

eXistenZ (1999) Repeat viewing - Not much my type but still pretty good.

Blade (1998) - Nothing but a good time.

The Old Man and the Gun (2018) A very good watch but nothing that especially stands out.

Overlord (2018) A high rating for my entertainment.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) A good flick but Sherlock Holmes has never been of interest to me.

Razorback (1984) Pretty good for a B movie.

Widows (2018) + I'll be surprised if there's a movie from 2018 that I like more.

Roma (2018) - It took a while but it finally hooked me.

White Boy Rick (2018) The kind of story that appeals to me and they did a decent job.

What Have You Done to Solange? Average Giallo.

Polar (2019) Good for an action fix.

A Star Is Born (2018) Worthwhile remake. I think I'd watch 100 versions.

The Night Comes for Us (2018) Insane amounts of action and violence.

Total February viewings-16
Total 2019 viewings-42

Senna



The life and death of Brazilian formula 1 race car driver Ayrton Senna.

This documentary movie treats its subject as a tragic figure. I am not sure I agree with that point of view. From the get go the movie shows him as someone different from other race car drivers and someone who naively happens to pursue his goal against all odds. It felt like there is another clear way to look at this whole ordeal. But what makes this point of view stick is the personality of Senna. He comes off as someone who just goes about by his business.Look, this movie covers all the standard tropes of traditional biopic but since in this case its documentary, the movie uses real footage to build a narrative. That is the most admirable aspect of the movie.

The main challenge involved in making a great auto racing movie is to sustain the adrenaline rush for the entire run time of the movie. There is a way to go about it but time and again all the racing movies drop the ball. Most of the movies in general have lot of filler scenes. The actual juicy part is 30% of the movie. This is especially true with a racing movie. Merging the adrenaline rush of an actual racing sequence with the legacy and conflict of race car drivers outside the race track is a near impossible task. There is a canned approach to it and every movie follows that. Race to tragic to legacy to doubt to conflicts to race. This cycle keeps going on and on. The problem with this approach is that there is nothing unique about it. You can literally replace auto racing with any other sport and you don't see much impact or difference in any of this.

Personally, I think the best and unique way of dealing with auto racing movie is to hold the audience attention and not let go the entire run time of the movie. No other sport can do that. It is the only sport which is intense from star to finish once it begins. Almost all other sports have pauses built into them. This is the key factor most racing movies forget. They sort of lean into the "short" duration of races and use the races to create the intense parts of the movie and use the rest of the movie to tell either a heroic conflicted story or a tragic conflicted story. There is nothing special about that. Same with this movie. Since the driver is from Brazil which is full of poverty, he helps people. Auto racing is known for its politics and the movie shows him being treated unfairly due to politics. The movie shows him as an ambitious person whose only goal in life and one true passion is to race and the movie makes him out to be quite uncomfortable in any other social circumstances. It doesn't show him having fun. In the end it treats his death as a combination of failure of auto racing safety regulations and his never quit attitude and human spirit. To me that just doesn't cut it. Even though the movie deals with his rivalry with a fellow race car driver in great detail it all somehow feels very cliched. The conflict is there in real life and the documentary doesn't do anything outstanding. All in all , despite setting the movie exclusively in formula 1 racing tracks and Brazil the movie and storytelling lacks cerebral touch and feels safe in its approach. Hopefully future movies like Ford v. Ferrari by James Mangold avoids these cliches. The key here is to make the whole movie feel like a race. Director needs to get creative in telling the story and at the same time use the scenes outside race tracks to build momentum in the race. Make the people observing the race feel unsafe themselves as to what it all means. Most of the spectators in auto racing movies are speed junkies. So why not use them to build the momentum in the race tracks. If there is corporate pressure on the drivers then use that to build momentum on the race and not treat it as an element from a different movie. I believe that since Ford v. Ferrari deals with endurance racing and I don't think there is another movie that deals with endurance racing the length of races is long and that might help the movie to be different and be the definitive car movie of all time.

One more thing I liked about this movie is its origins. The movie was made because the filmmakers involved are massive fans of Senna and since his name will soon be forgotten from pop culture with passing of time, the filmmakers as fans decided to make the movie. That is quite rare in film industry. Movies getting made just due to the passion and desire and fandom of its filmmakers towards its central character is quite rare. That's highly admirable.

★★½

House of Games * (1987) - Mamet
Dr. Margaret Ford’s life is coming up aces. Her psychiatry practice is thriving. She donates personal time at the loony bin. She just wrote a best seller so she is becoming a minor celebrity; when a patient says he is perhaps in danger of being killed over his gambling debts, she feels she had enough street cred to intervene personally with his bookie. It’s interesting that the conmen see her as easy mark at the onset, her carefully concealed manias are all readable tells for them; it’s unstated that she is also running a con game on the public with her self-help platitudes. The irony is the conman misreads just how bent she turns out to truly be.

Flowers of Evil (2013) - Nagahama
I’m including this simply because of the last four or five animé series I’ve tried to watch, I’ve given up on each one after the first couple of episodes and I surprisingly (finally!) made it all the way to the end of one. This bizarre love triangle that was pretty solid except for the last ten minutes in the series, where it dissolves into gibberish setting up season two. This is about teen-aged angst with varying levels of rotoscoped alienation; our shy hero secretly worships the straight A student from afar; she seems to understand she is a beautiful doll doing exactly what her parents and teachers demand of her. Because he reads Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, he imagines himself a closet rebel, above the numbing conformity of their small town. Whereas the quiet girl that sits behind him in homeroom class may be the actual item, genuinely damaged and alienated.

Moonrise (1948) - Borzage
The director disposes of all the suspense immediately and the audience is left with an internal drama of a man stumbling towards the light. He has a festering rage against the world because he has been bullied and tormented since childhood. The film has a lot of really crisp subtext: a baby in a crib is indelibly marked by the sins of his father. At the end of a racoon hunt, he climbs up a tree to shake the trembling animal from the limb aware that only his name will soon remain on the list of murder suspects and the baying bloodhounds will soon be set upon him. There’s a wonderful visual echo of a hangman throwing the gallows lever and a speedometer needle inching up before a car crash.

Captain Conan (1996) - Tavernier
The film points out that although millions of men fought in the World War 1, it was won by only a thousand or so true warriors. Captain Conan leads one such autonomous commando unit that use the cover of darkness to slip through no man’s land to massacre the enemy then disappear like wraiths. Captain Conan chooses their own targets and battles; they independently commandeer whatever they need or want. With the Armistice quickly approaching soon they will be tossed aside to rot; the war has made wolves in human clothing unfit for civilian life.

★★★

The Killing * (1956) - Kubrick
Before the martial arts film was invented, back in the old days, wrestlers were the go to example of dangerous brawlers. So it’s always a laugh to see them taken seriously in old films with their wrestling moves. He’s wearing a tearaway shirt that reveals his barrel chest, but then this is only a staged diversion. There is a wonderful bit of fun with the time stamps, for example: Maxwell Cornblower entered the Bus depot at precisely 10.15 a.m. This conflates that idea that arriving somewhere at a preordained time means you have complete control and mastery over your destiny; this is a delicious bit of self-delusion. After the heist the mastermind (he just got out of prison the week before) unconsciously begins to self-sabotage himself; getting lost in traffic; forgetting where he lives; he’s carrying a duffel bag full of money with him; yet he buys the cheapest, flimsiest suitcase he can find at a pawnshop. The film is wonderfully bleak.

M * (1931) - Lang
Lang uses match-cuts to establish the similarity between two groups of men. A criminal will make a gesture in one scene which will be cross-cut and finished by a cop in another scene. In one meeting, the authorities redouble their efforts and in the other, the criminal underworld decides the cops are useless and decide to catch the killer themselves. A child’s balloon floats up to the sky---touches and lights up the telephone lines of her death; the next scene has street vendors running in the streets screaming the sensational news. I was surprised by the level of complexity in the film.

Miss Bala (2019) - Hardwicke
The great despair of the original film is remade as a paltry thriller about grrrrl power. At the end of the film Gloria is recruited as a CIA operative as some kind of secret agent superhero; they keep dumping her on suicide missions yet she keeps popping up without a scratch. Even in this minor league beauty pageant, she barely makes up to the other contestant’s shoulders, she’s got a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. Just how far they are from the original film, the audience is told, not once, but twice that the “Star” gang is going to bribe the judges to make her winning believable for the audience. The original film is far subtler; in that film a representative from the gang merely tells the pageant organizers that Miss Bala is going to win; disagreeing would mean they would simply be escorted to the back alley and disappear. This has the best tattoo of the month: the bony hands of death clutch the back of one thug’s neck; this is either a curse or a blessing.

Capernaum (2018) - Labaki
The plight and pathos was trowelled on a little too thick for my tastes in this nightmare scenario when an Ethiopian mother is caught in a routine police sweep of an overseas phone call center. The (hard boiled, foul-mouthed) 12 year old boy she has taken under her wing as an au pair to watch her one year old child while she works during the day are abandoned without resources in a roadside, Lebanese shanty town. He sets out every morning looking for her and you are waiting for the horrible moment when he loses the enfant.

The River (1951) - Renoir
Renoir uses great authentic amateur actors like a factory owner with a glass eye or a one legged man. A visiting relative (a disillusioned war hero) stirs the hearts of a few young women living in some great houses lining the Ganges. This is unhurried storytelling that flows by just like the river. There is a recurring motif of rebirth; the annual festivals are time markers signalling the passage of time which suggests that everyone is dying a season or a celebration at a time, but each morning is a kind of rebirth. I loved at the end of the film, each of the girls got a personal letter from Captain John who returned to the states and they all dropped his letters and dashed off when something more interesting happened.

Believe in Me (2006) - Collector
This story about a high school women’s basketball team really gains because of the epoch and setting; it was the early sixties so there was no future for gifted women athletes, no college scholarships up for grabs, no Olympic teams to fill; these farm girls play for love of the game and a brief moment in time.

Cold Water (1994) - Assayas
A producer asked a few up and coming directors if they could do an hour long film about their memories of being young and Assayas was the only one to submit a script with a stipulation he would bump up it to a feature length film for the same amount of money. The high point of the film will be the holiest of holies, the house party; add a killer sound track and a sound system you crank up until the windows vibrate and it’s a done deal: the pangs of seventeen. I don’t think the bar was placed particularly high. I’m beginning to believe the power mix is a cliché that doesn’t quite work in cinema, sure one can appropriate a time period by merely looking up and playing all the chart toppers from a certain period, but is that really genuine? There is an inarticulate adolescent rage about the falseness of the world and being pushed into a vocational cubby hole for the rest of their life. Their rebellion is limited to futile acts of self-destruction and vandalism; the young couple seems to be united in their confusion rather than their passion.

Fury (1936) - Lang
It was a bit odd that the film immediately hammered down the character traits of the lead within the opening minutes, but this pays off in spades at the end where the audience knows exactly where the story is going. The complex subject matter made surprisingly simple; the prosecuting attorney simply takes the witness list from the defense and allows each man accused of mob violence to produce their iron-clad alibis, before introducing news footage of the event that shows each defendant is guilty as charged and every single person in town is a liar. One can almost as feel the pressures on the director to make the story more palatable for a mainstream audience; the unstated subject of the film is the lynching of black people in the south. The film suggests obliquely that his fiancé is black but can pass for white.

Destroyer (2018) - Kusama
Detective Erin Bell knows the exact moment when her life turned to **it and her fall from grace began. She was one half of a duo of undercover cops who fell in love and decided to run away together after the job; the mickey mouse gang they infiltrated wouldn’t notice if a duffel bag or two went missing during a planned bank heist. Decades later (filled with empty whiskey bottles) the ground is finally rushing up at her with one last case. Best hair and make-up of the month, there are liver spots galore in this film. This is also a textbook example of what one transposed edit can accomplish in a film.

T-Men (1947) - Mann
There is an evocative use of shadow and chiaroscuro in the film; characters leap out of curtains of black or disappear into the shadows. This somehow reminds me a little of To Live and Die in L.A; since they both involved undercover treasury agents.

Smashed (2012) - Ponsoldt
The story differs from the usual addiction film in that it skirts the fall to absolute rock bottom with romance and humour (each night is just another party for this couple) they are avid cyclists, since this avoids obvious transportation problems when the bars close down for the night, although later on in the film the husband gets arrested for impaired bicycle riding. Her husband strode into an AA meeting as a prank one night and stole a handful of pamphlets; it’s no longer the laugh riot it once was that they answered yes to every single question because nighttime is become increasingly scary proposition for her; where is she going to wake up tomorrow morning? Our heroine realizes that her body is beginning to seriously betray her. She has to deliberately avoid temptation and choose sobriety to move forward in her life or remain on a downward spiral of self-destruction.

Sudden Fear (1952) - Miller
The set-ups were great. The playwright waltzes into the Broadway rehearsals and immediately fires the lead actor because in her opinion, he isn’t handsome enough to be the lady killer the role requires. He is surprisingly understanding about the whole thing when he bumps into her on a train ride to the West coast a few months later and they spend time with each other and end up falling in love. In her study, she has a state of the art, voice activated Dictaphone, which can remain idle for hours, then catch that great one liner or complete unfiltered conversations like when Hubby (now married to her) and his mistress take refuge in her office to fine tune their plan to dispatch her from the land of the living and really start spending her money. After crying her eyes out, she does a quick professional re-write on the spot: she is going to whack her two timing husband and send that little tramp to the gas chamber for his murder. There is a great bit with wind-up toy poodle in his mistress’s apartment; when he shows up there, he winds it up and sets it on the ground and it runs straight to the closet where she is hiding.

I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) - Pressburger & Powell
I liked the momentum of this romantic comedy; there is a mad rush to make it to Kiloran Island in Scotland and get hitched to the richest man in Britain. Before leaving on the train, the future bride is given the itinerary of their wedding/honeymoon week clocked down to the minute and hour. Unfortunately a gale takes up permanent residence between the mainland and the island, making the trip too dangerous to be undertaken, the wind also snatches her agenda from her hands. She is forced (probably for the first time in her life) to reflect on what she genuinely wants out of life as she kills time in this small seaside community brimming with colorful characters--- monetarily challenged, but rich in spirit. At a fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration, you can see the dancer’s feet bouncing from the thin planks making up the floorboards. It doesn’t hurt there is also a handsome Laird vacationing in the village and slowly they begin to embody the tragic curse of two doomed lovers of the nearby haunted castle.

★★★½

Something in the Air (2012) - Assayas
Assayas revisits the same subject matter of Cold Water eight years later. This time he sets his film just after the May 68 protests (which almost toppled the state) the activists still go out to regularly protest (and get their fair share of abuse) the idea that one could make a better world lingers in the air, unaware the moment has passed. There is a nice counterpoint between his militant, driven intellectual world (he begins to notice the various fudges and shortcomings) and the youthful bliss he follows to find paying gigs for his future vocation as a graphic designer. The end of the film has him working at Pinewood studios in London on a ridiculous creature feature: a bikini bimbo has taken refuge on a submarine with crew made up of both the Nazi’s and the Allies yet she is still being chased by a phallic sea monster. There is a bittersweet ending, where his high school sweetheart (she perished in a house fire) mentions she did a film one summer. He sits down for an evening of avant-garde short films at a local theatre and she appears on screen.

Abigail’s Party (1977) - Leigh
This drama was restricted (for the most part) to a single room. The first surprise was there is no Abigail; Abigail’s party is the gathering of teen-agers a couple of houses down and they are never seen, although the thumping of their music is heard at certain times. This is primed for drama in the way the hostess expertly needles her husband; the way her party dress complements her couch and the passive-aggressive way her husband bails on greeting her guests for a work related errand. The glowering husband of the second couple is always framed reacting disapprovingly to everything his silly wife says. This was one of Leigh’s contributions to the long running British “Play for Today” TV series.

The East (2013) - Batmanglij
I loved that these activists were all privileged children of the elite that experienced the curtain malfunction in their million dollar educations; noticing their position in life was not earned but bequeathed like diamonds. At the end, her boss asks our undercover heroine the great head scratcher: why the dumpster diving? They are rich, why not just put in a garden in their back yard? She has to explain, there is nothing wrong with the food supermarkets throw away, this is merely a way they maintain their outrageous profits; she turns and finds a nibbled piece of fruit from the tree of knowledge in a waste basket, and takes a big bite out of it, signaling her own epiphany and transformation. Unfortunately the ending peters out into complete fantasy, instead of publically outing this phalanx of well paid, corporate spies; she is going to take this list of names and visit them one by one, and personally explain to them how the world actually works and magically a light bulb will appear over their heads. “Oh, the violence and deceit inherent in the system, I never noticed that until just now, thank-you so much.” Belief systems by design are impenetrable to reason and logic. The corporate overlords have of course, cleverly gamed the system; all their work product is protected with non-disclosure agreements, meaning they are going to deliberately become criminals in the eyes of the legal system in order to do what is morally right.

★★★★

Miss Bala * (2003) - Naranjo
This is an exposé about the creeping corruption in a Mexican border town ruled by the gun; human life is next to worthless and no amount of street smarts or intelligence will save you. This is clear the morning after, when Laura Guerrero simply asks a cop for some information about the shooting at the night club and he radios headquarters with her inquiry and volunteers to drive her to the police station---seconds later he is called on his cellphone and told where to deliver the witness and she is simply handed over to the gang. There doesn’t seem to be any establishing shots in the film, our heroine is always seen three ways: head and shoulders looking into the camera; a tight frame directly follows behind her; or a stationary point of view near to her, which emphasizes the feeling of helplessness and dread. The fraudulent beauty contest is a metaphor; the bathing suit portion of the competition is when they trot out a captured drug kingpin every once in a while and crow about what great progress they are making in the war on drugs. With the amount of prestige (all the security forces all get their annual 20% budget increase, year in, year out) and the endless river of money involved: this gravy train is never coming to an end.

Seen in February Pt.2



Alex Garland is a really creative dude. The main characters gave great performances. The visuals are very nice. The script is really good (Lots of philosophical musings). Great soundtrack and characters. The tension and fear the film creates with its ‘who can you trust’ approach was very effective. The whole film provokes an interesting conversation on artificial intelligence.




Incredibly fun. To think this came from the same director as ’The Evil Dead’. I think I liked this more than Spiderverse. The best part about the whole film is the score, it sounds so epic in scale. I really liked the performances by Tobey Maguire and J.K. Simmons. I loved most of the characters, all very charismatic. The story is very simple, but it’s effective. The action scenes are fun and the romance is super cute. The only thing I can really criticise is that the CGI is very outdated and the Green Goblin looks like a f*cking Power Rangers villain, but it didn’t take away from my experience of the film at all.

Now all I have to do is watch the sequel and I’ll finally understand all the memes!



As a guy who’s seen every William Hartnell episode of Doctor Who, it was really weird seeing him as a tough gangster instead of a grumpy, cheeky old man. Overall it was an entertaining noir, even if the ending was really dumb.



A really fun body horror flick. It feels a bit wrong to call it that as it only goes body horror in the last twenty minutes. The effects and the overall atmosphere of those scenes are amazing though (Also that butthead scene, classic).



What a creative film! Music is usually very abstract, even if it revolves around a very basic story. I feel like this film captured this perfectly, it’s like ‘looking’ at music. The songs are great (I absolutely loved ‘The Trial’). The animation is amazing, and all the set design is very good. It’s a shame the animated segments only took a small portion of the story, they were the best part.



I won’t spoil anything, but it’s an interesting, Americanisation of the Agatha Christie formula. Pretty mysterious and suspenseful. Would recommend if you’re into that kinda ‘Agatha Christie’ stuff.



Cute barely feature-length film by the director of ‘The Redd Balloon’. One thing that stood out was that there was a cute scene of a horse chasing a rabbit with funny music playing over it, then it just suddenly jump-cuts to the kid eating the rabbit on a spit. I don’t think that was intentional was it was so dark and funny.


-
A really fun movie. I thought the mystery was genuinely interesting. I find it a bit weird how the film didn’t delve into the moral ambiguity of arresting someone for a crime they have yet to commit. The action and suspense scenes were very well handled. The unique visual style was pretty cool.


+
The most unique film I’ve seen from the prison escape genre. The first 30 minutes are setting up the characters, and the rest of the film is them planning their escape. A film with a simple premise that really takes its time, filled with long scenes of the characters just chipping away at walls, cutting through bars or unlocking doors. I’ve never seen this approach before, and I found it quite relaxing yet engrossing at the same time. Despite all this, it still manages to have a constant aura of suspense (Are the guards coming?). The cinematography and lighting are also great. The use of diegetic sound is genius: The constant banging of the hammers is like a soundtrack in this music-less film.




-?
My first Tati film, and I don’t really know what to say about it. The production design, colour scheme and sets are absolutely fantastic, I can’t deny that: It’s like something out of a bloody sci-fi film! The soundtrack is very memorable. There’s something quite interesting about the presentation: Just watching strangers do stuff for two hours. The thing is though I thought that worked quite well in the first half, though it got kinda boring in the second half (I fell asleep though a good portion of the restaurant section). That’s why I’m quite mixed on the film. Still wanna see the other films by Tati.

Mr. Hulot's Holiday is my favorite. I like the more relaxed pace & commentary in Play Time, but MHH is a bit sillier and more fun, just not as highbrow (for lack of a better term) as his later movies. I love that charmingly French atmosphere; like cinematic candy. Big inspiration for Mr. Bean I think.

Triple Frontier



A group of ex-special force soldiers decide to rob a drug lord in remote south america. But the plan goes awry and they must decide what they are willing to live with.

I have to be honest, I went into this movie with skepticism knowing that its a Netflix release. As the movie went along it only reaffirmed my doubts in it. Why was this movie not a theatrical release ? I have an answer after watching the movie. Firstly , there is a certain kind of stardom that is very toxic for the actor with that reputation. If you can bring audience to theaters no matter what kind of movie it is, as long as its good is a good stardom to have. But then, there is other kind of stardom which plagues mainly handsome men with black hair and black eyes and strong facial features that is very bad for the actor. These kinds of guys can't play different kinds of roles and they should make different variations of action movies to turn in profits. But the problem is, they start effecting the quality and tone and legacy of a movie they are in. For example, a few good men is first and foremost a court room drama. Rest of the movie is working so good that whenever you see Tom cruise in the movie, as good as his dialogues and scenes are, whenever you see him, you are reminded of a variation of top gun or days of thunder. That in a way takes you out of the movie. But the moment you see jack nicholson in a scene, you are brought back to the best part of the movie. That is very telling. Ben Affleck suffers from this. Sicario also dealt with cartels. One of the reasons why that was so good is because none of the actors in the movie jumped out of the movie or took you out of the movie. But Ben Affleck takes you out of this movie.

The movie starts with a bust and the officer in the drug bust catches wind of a large sum of money stored in a house in south american jungles guarded by drug lord. So, he assembles his former colleagues to rob that money and set for life. The best version of this story has to be either very elemental or very complex. Run of the mill is not ambitious enough but it can be entertaining although this movie after a certain point is neither. I hate to be the guy that craps all over the hard work of the filmmakers but certain parts of this movie are not well thought out.

The problem with this movie is that there is no pay off to all the build up. This movie doesn't have enough bite to it. Once they are in the house where they are supposed to rob, the movie falls off the cliff in its tension building and consequences to actions. Basically they have a 40 minute widow to rob the house and get out with minimal but essential causalities. They should kill the drug lord and rob a certain sum of money. But once in the house the actions escalate and one kill turns to a massacre and certain sum of money turns into robbing as much as possible and then burning the rest to the ground. The problem with this approach is that it feels scripted and not accidental or out of control. In order for this to happen, the atmosphere and circumstances in the house should feel out of control. The movie tries to show them as being greedy and out of control once they see the wealth that they loose track of time and make bad decisions killing more people than needed. But the problem is, script and actors were not able to sell that. Ben Affleck is tasked with acting greedy once they see all the money but he is not that good of an actor to sell that aspect. So it just come off as not being consistent with his character. Because until that point, he is the one who is the most hesitant about robbing and all of a sudden he acts as complete 180 shift.

Another major problem with this movie is that it kinda feels like it has a movie star reject cast. The cast is filled with actors that the studios tried to make happen for quite some time and audience rejected them. Charlie Hunnam or Garet Hudland or Oscar Isaac fall into that category. So you already feel this overwhelming mediocrity in the cast because you have seen all these actors play in supporting roles in other movies and all of a sudden you are supposed to buy these guys as leads ? its a subconscious dilemma the movie leaves you with in the first 20 minutes of the movie. It almost feels like they cast your next door handsome neighbor whom you don't particular care for and ask you to believe that he is an ex-army soldier. The production on the other hand is massive. It looks like they shot in location. The director cleverly avoid cityscapes through out the movie. The whole movie takes place in pretty rural and non-urban places.

The second half of the movie is a poorly made survival tale with characters having no conviction. None of the actors were able to sell me on the absolute desperate nature of their situation or their will to become rich. After crashing helicopter several miles from the coast in a remote farm due to overloading it with extra cash, the characters are forced to move the cash by foot. When their actions lead one of them to die, the rest of them just loose their will so fast , its ridiculous. First they loose some cash in a mudslide. Then they burn some of it to stay warm aka Pablo Escobar style. After one of them dies, they drop most of the money in a deep valley and just fill their carry on bags with cash and carry the body of their dead partner. I do understand the mindset of people like that who are so focused and trained as army soldiers that they have certain carelessness about stuff they didn't earn or stuff that doesn't feel right to them. Men in army have certain level of righteousness built into them. So it makes sense that they don't behave as thugs and thieves that are cunning and calculated. But still its a bummer to see them act with such carelessness considering they are highly trained soldiers.

The ending scene is also ridiculous where all of them give away whatever they bring home to a family trust of their dead partner so it goes to his daughters. By this point it almost feels like the worth of the money is lost in the eyes of the audience. Because it goes from 250 million $ to 5 million $ because of their lack of planning and will power. So all I can think of looking at the money is what it could have been. So the moment they give away whatever is left, I didn't care one bit. That's a very bad note to end the movie on. Moreover this movie once again proves that South American landscapes and jungles are not particularly appealing for theatrical experience. Despite these huge landscapes and mountains and jungles and snow mountains surrounding our characters, the script is too weak to take any advantage of any of this. I started noticing that one of the biggest giveaways of a movie's quality is if its leads are movie-star rejects because that indicates that there is something wrong with the script. All the actual movie stars have passed on the script and since the script demands someone that looks like a movie star they cast movie star rejects.

Seen in February Pt.3/3


+
Sacha Baron Cohen is a very funny artist (Both in a ‘haha’ way and in a weird way). In terms of hidden camera comedy, this goes full out: I was cringing uncontrollably at like three scenes. The film is actually a very interesting document in terms of showing homophobia in America in 2009 (In the way the people react to Bruno). The final scene in the wrestling ring was so good.

Also that one scene where Bruno says that Kevin Spacey is straight, oh boy!


-
This is just such a weird film to comprehend. We’re witnessing probably the most destructive murderers of our time (In terms of kill count) casually talking about it and acting like normal people. It’s so horrible the way they relish in their sins and the way daytime television hosts casually talk about Communists the way Nazi media talked about the Jews.

Ghostwriter



A ghostwriter for a controversial ex-prime minister gets mixed up with his shady political dealings and the people close to him.

This is the first Roman Polanski movie since Chinatown that felt like its in his wheelhouse. Auteur theory is something very very magical. It is the stuff of legend in the art of film making. Because a lot of things have to go right for something like that to work. A director considered an auteur knows what he wants from each and every department. His style is as important as the script of the movie. He needs to be able to communicate what he wants from cinematographer, editing and other major departments to fit his style. So, as soon as I noticed the uneasiness in the air I knew I was in for a unique film experience.

Majority of the movie takes place in a remote countryside in US. But since Polanski can't enter US, he shot it in Europe and it feels like something is a bit off. But surprisingly that works to the film's advantage. Seeing all these places that doesn't look like american locations but we are told its in america makes for a pretty weird experience while watching the movie. We follow a ghostwriter who accepts the assignment to work on an ex-prime minister's autobiography for a London publisher. He is replacing his deceased predecessor. The movie keeps audience at the same level as the protagonist. So we know what he knows when he knows about it. As he accepts the job he starts noticing weird occurrences happening around and to him. He gets mugged and robbed. While on his way to US he finds out that the ex-PM is being investigated for war crimes involving CIA torture. Tempted by the financial offer he decides to go anyway and be done with it. The performance of Ewan McGregor is pretty bland. You never get a sense of who he is and what his personality is. He might just be a curious nerd. But since it's an imaginary character based on the novel, actor should have taken it into more expressive territory. When you are playing someone like Dick Cheney, you can't really make him super expressive because everyone knows how he is and making him something he is not will never work. So he goes to this vacation spot of ex-PM in remote US to read the draft written by his predecessor and finish the book using it.

The atmosphere of the US location is quite fascinating. There are 4 or 5 locations on the whole. You got the house, a water crossing harbor with a ferry, a motel nearby, a lodge by the harbor and the woods near the house. The mystery of it all stems from the unsettling nature of the death of the previous ghostwriter. The replacement catches up with his work and continues getting to the heart of who the prime minister was during his life. While all this is happening, the outrage and actions of the prime minister when he was power comes under scrutiny as well as push by government officials to try him for his crimes. What the ghost writer doesn't know is how far his predecessor has come in his unearthing of the life of PM while researching for the book. So through a combination of his predecessor's work and his own digging, Ewan McGregor comes to a conclusion that his college buddy might have been working for undercover CIA even before joining the college. That ratchets up the thrill a notch.

The movie has 2 spectacular sequences going for it. These sequences prove why roman Polanski is a great director. Both are not exactly wordy sequences but the framing of those sequences and the atmospheric nature of them kinda makes them stand out. One involves the protagonist escaping 2 killers sent after him after his encounter with a culprit. The escape is from a ferry. So he gets on the ferry in his car and gets off it as it is about to leave the harbor there by getting rid of the killers on the ferry. That is such a clever Roman Polanski sequence. Because the danger is there but it is subtle danger. Those guys are going to kill him if he stayed on the ferry. Even after getting off the ferry the sequence sustains the eeriness. The whole architecture of the ferry and its harbor quite brilliantly fits into the tone of the film. The protagonist doesn't try to leave the harbor because he knows that the ferry is not going to turn around and the killers will have to take the trip of ferry. So he just stays in this eerie lodge which is by the harbor and it's in of itself is very creepy. The second sequence involves the house itself. It is a very strange house with wind blowing all the time and with the increasing scrutiny on the ex-PM , protestors started waiting outside the gate of the compound. This movie uniquely shows how it feels like to be be in the vicinity of a politician under immense scrutiny.As the ghost writer makes contact with the ex colleague of the ex-PM, who is still a government official trying to bring him to justice, he is tasked with getting confession from the man himself and in the process of doing so it appears that things appear not to be what they seem. Following the assassination of ex-PM and during the unveiling of his book that is finished by the ghost writer himself, he uncovers that the wife of ex-PM herself is a CIA recruit.

What the movie does so well is it shows how dangerous people in extremely high positions can be. They play mind games all the time to control and manipulate others to get them to do what they want. This ghost writer is way out of his depth from the get go. Even before he set foot on American soil he is out of his depth. He has been seeing warning signs that are telling him to not take the job. The thing is, ex-PM's wife and his CIA buddy don't want any writer to get close to the truth. When the first writer was doing his research, he came way too close to the truth and was killed by them. All this is unbeknownst to the ex-PM of course. But since he wants to finish the book, he hires the next guy to finish the book. But what they don't know is that the previous writer hid some sensitive information in the house and the new ghost writer catches wind of that. It's basically powerful people that are too big to get caught are too willfully careless to tie up the loose ends and the new writer catches wind of one of such ends. The whole time his focus was on the CIA pal of ex-PM but once he catches wind of the information that the secret in the manuscript is in "the beginnings" and that was the reason the script was not allowed to leave the house, he puts the puzzle pieces together and uncovers the truth.

The movie adds an extra level of sinister element to it all. Because, from the get go we have a layer of sinisterness to the whole setting that we see through the fresh eyes of the ghost writer. Our ex-PM is believed to have been willfully involved in US torture program. So the ghost writer is sitting and talking to a guy who seem to have enough proof against him to convict him of war crimes. All this adds certain uneasiness to the conversation and as the resident writer he unwittingly becomes an ally to the ex-PM. But, the moment he gets close to his college buddy who happens to be a CIA operative even before he joined the college it starts turning dark and with final revelation that the wife herself was recruited by CIA before she met ex-PM decades ago makes it pitch black. Because the implications of these findings point to something far more nefarious than anyone could imagine. So, have they been brainwashing the prime minister from his college days to make him run for public service and with the help of US government he moves up the political ranks and once he becomes PM he supports US in all their political policies including the torture program ? is he the Manchurian candidate of US government ? because all this leads to an explosive political scandal of sinister proportions almost to the point of fantasy and unbelievable.I mean, who would believe someone could be manipulated for decades on end ? was he brain washed by his wife ? was she able to manipulate him for so long in such serious decision making processes ? So all the sinisterness is captured in the movie through its style and tone. It is one of its kind.

The movie's flaws are mainly with Ewan McGregor's character portrayal and his character's decisions. He takes no measures in hiding his tracks when he veers of-course. A lot of times in the movie he does something that could potentially puts him in harms way , yet he simply is not careful enough. At one point he steels the manuscript and at some other point he just gives away some information he knows about the situation to the wife or to the ex-PM himself and thats too risky and dumb. All this makes the film good but not great. But man can Polanski direct ! you see this movie and then see china town or ninth gate with Johnny Depp and you can feel the directorial flair.

Gave it 4/5 as well, one of my favorite suspenseful thrillers of the last decade.

Too much of a backlog to write up comments, so here we go:

A Star is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937)

Steamboat Bill Jr. (Buster Keaton and Charles Reisner, 1928)

Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich, 1973)

Late Spring (Yasujirô Ozu, 1949)

The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard, 2018)

Apache (Robert Aldrich, 1954)

A Woman Under The Influence (John Cassevetes, 1974)

Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)

BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018)

L'Animale (Katharina Mückstein, 2018)

Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier, 2018)

Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

Blue Ruin (Jeremy Saulnier, 2013)

Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018)

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)

The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

Je vous salue Sarajevo (Jean-Luc Godard, 1993)

Renzo Piano: The Architect of Light (Carlos Saura, 2018)

Hedgehog in the Fog (Yuriy Norshteyn 1975)

Akira (Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 1988)

Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)

Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)

Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2018)

I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach, 2016)

Buchanan Rides Alone (Budd Boetticher, 1958)

The American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977)

Yourself and Yours (Hong San-soo, 2016)

The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960)

A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)

Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943)

Under The Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, 2018)

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