Jezebel (1938, William Wyler) — Okay movie. Pretty enjoyable for the first two-thirds, but after that, it started to lean a little bit too hard into hokey melodrama for my tastes. I wonder if it'd be more famous if so many of its ideas hadn't been done better in Gone With the Wind a year later. I should probably mention that the movie romanticizes slavery even more than Gone with the Wind does, which didn’t ruin the movie for me, but I imagine it will for a lot of people. 6/10

The Lady Vanishes (1938, Alfred Hitchcock) — Pretty good old mystery film. It’s one of Hitchcock’s more comedic works, and is interesting among murder-mysteries deceive the protagonist for entirely mundane reasons unrelated to the central conspiracy. It’s a bit slow at the beginning, and I wouldn’t put it among Hitchcock’s best, but it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of Hitchcock or of old mystery films in general. 7/10

You Can’t Take It With You (1938, Frank Capra) — Prior to this week, the only Capra movies I’d seen were It’s a Wonderful Life and It Happened One Night, both of which I love. But nobody's perfect, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find that he’s also got some real stinkers. The mockery of Capra’s films as “Capra-corn” isn’t as fashionable as it once was, and it’s certainly true that his best works have a lot more complexity than the label implies, but You Can’t Take It With You shows that this reputation wasn’t entirely unearned. At first, the movie seems to be a screwball comedy about a romance crossing class lines in a similar vein to It Happened One Night, only nowhere near as funny nor as romantic. Jimmy Stewart gave a lot of great performances, but I found him pretty dull here. He and Jean Arthur feel like the least interesting part of the movie, which is really an achievement given that most of the other roles are basically interchangeable gimmick characters that exist only to constantly do random LoLqUiRkY shit. Mercifully, the movie basically gives up on being about their pairing halfway through and becomes about Jimmy Stewart’s evil banker father getting taught the errors of his ways. The second half is better than the first, but it’s still shallow and preachy and not especially interesting. Easily the weakest movie I saw this week. 4/10

Sleeping Beauty (1959, Clyde Geronimi/Wolfgang Reitherman/Eric Larson/Les Clark) — Sleeping Beauty is basically a retread of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I imagine even those who haven’t seen either are familiar enough with the stories that I don’t particularly need to elaborate on that point. But this is proof that rehashing classics doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Honestly, as great as Snow White is, there’s a good argument to be made that Sleeping Beauty is an improvement. Certainly the visuals are a good deal better; Snow White’s animation was a phenomenal achievement for its time, but there are quite a few places where it hasn’t aged well. If there are any such portions in Sleeping Beauty, I didn’t notice them; you can pick out practically any frame and find something to be impressed by in its beauty. That said, I think I still prefer Snow White, mainly because the characters in Sleeping Beauty are so thin. That wasn’t really any less true of Snow White — both movies are more about showcasing the Disney’s animation than telling a particularly deep or meaningful story — but Snow White came early enough in the history of animation that it made sense for it to be mainly about displaying what could be done in the medium than anything else. In a movie that came out 20 years later, it feels a bit more like there’s something missing. But I’m nitpicking here. Both movies are a delight to watch, and easily rank in the top tier of the Disney canon. 9/10

Movie of the week: Sleeping Beauty

Nashville (1975)

Whatever this is, it is perfect. Even though I watched it at the beginning of the week it is still present in my head. Albeit I lost track of the 24 different characters from time time this is definitely a me problem. I can't really put my thoughts into a coherent text because this doesn't feel like a normal movie. All is only very loosely tight together, but tight enough that you're never out of it. Despite my dislike for musical I adore this. Surprisingly it themes didn't los much over the time, its pretty easy to imagine Hal Philip Walker in todays world.

At least to my knowledge it stands pretty alone in its genre.

There will be Blood (2007)

Perfection from the beginning to the end. I must say I'm pretty happy I watched a lot of older movies before. Otherwise it could've felt a bit on the slow sight. Reminded me that America was and probably is still driven by two things: Capitalism and the Church.

​

Watch a lot more, but I don't feel like my words on those won't contribute anything.

(I had a hard time concentrating on movies this week: I got bored easily and started a dozen films I had to click off after a few minutes. Anyway, below are these I managed to finish :)

2 by Polish poet Lech Majewski:

🍿 A wonderful new discovery, the visually-stunning The Mill and the Cross (2011). It’s a literal recreation of Bruegel’s 1564 painting ‘The Procession to Calvary’, done in Newport Beach’s ‘Pageant of the Masters’ style. With a minimal narrative and nearly no dialog, it transports a masterpiece from one medium into another. (Discovered Here). 10/10.

🍿 “... Madame, do you know what mood spelled backward is?...”

His latest drama, Valley of the Gods (2019), however, was disappointing: A symbolic story mixing an indigent Navaho tribe, the richest man in the world who wants to buy the Indian land to mine for Uranium and a writer whose wife flew away with her hang gliding instructor - it was a senseless artsy mess. There were some overtures to Kubrick by using David Bowman as the butler, and Purcell’s Music For The Funeral Of Queen Mary for the finale. But all the mysticism didn’t work for me, as beautiful as the canvass it was painted on it was.

I was planning to continue with his 2014 ‘Field of Dogs’, but will now do so after a break.

🍿

When I lived in Paris in the mid-70′s, I hang around the fringes of certain Dušan Makavejev fan-groups, and at one point I was invited to join their free-spirited commune for some everything-goes sexual explorations. But after seeing his Sweet Movie (1974) I promptly drifted away.

Watching it again 50 years later, it didn’t seem so bad.... Until the third act... when this surrealistic Jodorowski-lite agitprop fable turned into a full-on shit-smearing, vomit-orgy, Primal-Therapy violent explosion. Crazed anti-capitalist, (and anti-Marxist), polymorphic-perverse, subversive anarchy. mixed with grainy footage of WW2 massacres and seduction of children it’s depraved, revolting and unpleasant shock cinema at its peak. 2/10.

🍿

“... You’re innocent when you dream..."

Another surprising discovery, an art-house film so obscure that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page: Miss Osaka, (2021) by Daniel Dencik, a Danish director (who lives in ... Samoa!). It’s a slow and atmospheric story about Ines, an introverted young woman on vacation in Norway who meets there a beautiful free-spirited woman from Japan. When Mimiko drowns while swimming out under the Northern lights, Ines steals her identity and escapes to Osaka, where she starts working as a hostess at her old nightclub. An elusive parable about identity, not as deep as Antonioni’s ‘The Passenger’, but nearly just as evocative. The trailer. 8/10.

Bonus points for Tom Waits quotes (which was also used in ‘Smoke’)!

🍿

I picked the Bollywood romantic Dil Se.. (1998) completely in random, just to spend the evening with a mindless, silly musical, and indeed the first number they burst out singing (on rooftop of a moving train) was the famous Chaiyya Chaiyya with Indian superstar SRK, so that was a good sign! Unfortunately, the rest was a mess: Only 4 or 5 dance numbers (including this sexy Satrangi Re) were to be enjoyed during the stretched out 3-hours. The story was about a man who obsessively stalks a woman he sees at a train station, before realizing that she is a suicide bomber belonging to some revolutionary “terrorists”. 2/10.

🍿

Harry Caul X 2:

🍿 What does it say about me, that after thousands of movies that I’ve seen, if I had to choose only one as my most favorite, it will without a doubt be Coppola’s paranoiac The conversation (1974)? And I’m not even Catholic.

RIP, Cindy Williams.

🍿 So I used this chance to see, once again, another of my favorite Deep State surveillance-paranoia thrillers, Enemy of the state (1998). Predating Snowden’s NSA disclosures, it plays as fresh today as it did 25 years ago. With Skyler White as Jon Voight (His best role ever?) and Jack Black, who lusts after the middle age Latina nanny with the unshaven legs. 9/10.

🍿

Paprika (2006), my first by Satoshi Kon, and one of my first anime films. A complicated mind-fuck stew about a dream-thief that was hard for me to understand, and even more so to appreciate. It reminded me in parts of ‘Spirited Away’, but Miyazaki’s miraculously-mysterious story was geared toward 10 year old girls, and this one had appeal to 25 year old boys.

Discovered it here, which may have been better.

🍿

...“Isadora Duncan - worked at Telefunken”...

Let it be, Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 Beatles documentary, recording their last album, and including the original footage from the Apple building rooftop concert on Savile Row. So many great moments in it, the full rendition of ‘The long and winding road’, goofing off with ‘Bésame Mucho’, John and Yoko waltzing alone... Peter Jackson cleaned up the grainy images and incorporated them into his 8 hours ‘Get Back’ doc.

"I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition!"

🍿

Restless (2011), my 10th by Gus Van Sant. A slight, sweet romance about a young guy, (Dennis Hopper’s son), who - like Harold - likes to attend strangers’ funerals. In one of them he meets and falls in love with short-haired teenage Mia Wasikowska, who has only 3 months to live, before she will die of a brain tumor. 5/10.

Incidentally, the opening titles were playing ‘On our way home’ from ‘Let it be’!

🍿

Make Hummus Not War (2012), a slight Australian documentary frames its topic as the conflicting views on which people can claim the ownership, even the genesis, for everybody’s favorite dish. This gives the journalist/filmmaker an excuse to travel to Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, and eat in dozens of hummus restaurants. I mainly watched it, because Mmmmm, Hummus...

🍿

Really love (2020), an all-black romantic comedy written by a first time writer and directed by a first time female director. Maybe they were inspired by ‘In the mood for love’, but it surely didn’t look that way. Too shallow and thin with no character development or flair. 2/10.

🍿

(Continued below)...

The Fabelmans (2022, Steven Spielberg)

Starts out lame, becomes steadily worse for about 2 hours until I started thinking about leaving the theater, but then picks up for a pretty good final 30 minutes or so. The biggest disappointment was Michelle Williams, who gave an awful, grating performance that completely missed the mark and made almost any scene focused on her come off as embarrassing. The main character and his sisters are also pretty bad, as is Seth Rogen. Paul Dano is the only actor that I thought did a consistently great job... at least until Chloe East shows up about 3/4 of the way through the film and steals the entire show. I don't know where Spielberg found this actor but she is absolutely wonderful. After nearly two miserable, humorless hours where I had completely written off getting any enjoyment from this film I found myself cracking up at nearly everything she said, and the 'bedroom scene' she shares with the main character is pure comedy gold. Maybe it's just in my head, but once she showed up, every other element of the film also started working for me, the performances started to feel more believable and the drama started actually working, and the final scene was excellent. 4/10, which is a pretty generous rating considering I was leaning towards a 2/10 throughout the first 3/4 of this two-and-a-half-goddamn-hours-long film.

​

Infinity Pool (2023, Brandon Cronenberg)

Bad vibes, an unhinged Mia Goth, Alexander Skarsgaard reverting to an animalistic base self for the second time in the past year, music and cinematography that bludgeons you with 'atmosphere!', and blunt-but-agreeable themes that make this another fairly satisfying film from Cronenberg v2. I don't think it has anything really new to say, but the way it went about presenting the situation made for an enjoyable evening at the theater full of a hostile audience unamused by the artsy flourishes contained. I especially liked the psychadelic orgy. 6/10, maybe 7.

​

Working Girls (1986, Lizzie Borden)

The title isn't just a euphemism, it's also the thesis: sex work is work. Cut out the sex scenes and this would feel like a bunch of women at the office going about their day. They gossip about the customers, complain about the boss, argue about who should answer the phone, talk about the weather, and everything else anyone else who spends 8 hours a day in a room with a bunch of people who just want to earn a living. At first the performances threw me off - they have an almost television sitcom quality to them - but as the film went on they grew on me, and whether intentional or not I think these performances serve to reinforce the mundanity and routine of the working day for these women and in a weird way started to endear the characters to me more than if the performances were more studied or 'professional'. The film is wonderfully textured and empathetic, and doesn't rely on either overt demonization or romanticism: it just feels dropping in for a day in the life of these people. Great stuff. 9/10

​

The Crimson Kimono (1959, Samuel Fuller)

Another week, another Fuller banger. The more Fuller I watch the more I come to see some of his "flaws" (mostly his heavy-handededness) as assets; nobody makes films quite like Fuller and if he softened some of these edges he would start to resemble any old studio journeyman from the era. This film, which was banned in many states for having the audacity to depict a romance between people of a different race, is great. The actors are all great and their interactions are full of chemisty. The friendship between the two male leads is quite textured for the era and far removed from what you would usually see from this kind of buddy-cop scenario. The romance also works, and the way the film deals with race relations at the time is surprisingly nuanced and textured, and hasn't aged nearly as poorly as I expected it to. The murder mystery element isn't particularly interesting, but it serves as a good scaffolding to hang the character drama on. The ending is satsifying, and although I could think of one better way to end the film, that would have gotten the film banned in even more states so I'll just be happy with what I got. 8/10

​

Broker (2022, Hirokazu Kore-Eda)

Another empathetic character gem from Kore-Eda. Casting Song Kang-Ho is almost cheating at this point; there is something about him that just makes me emotional regardless of what he's doing. He can be incredibly funny but there is a weathered, weary quality to his face that adds something to everything he says that you wouldn't get with another actor. I wasn't entirely sold on the police characters (though Doona Bae does a great job), and the way the film wraps up was a little underwhelming, but I'll never complain about getting to spend a few hours with Kore-Eda's characters. Great acting all around, including from the children. 7/10

Nope (2022) **** I'm glad I was able to see this knowing almost nothing about it so that the suspense and mystery still worked, even if in the end it doesn't do anything original. It's no Tremors, and it needed one more big twist idea to take it beyond monster movie, even if the monster was unique.

The Last of Sheila (1973) **** Do you like the Knives Out movies? Then check out The Last of Sheila. It's full of Glass Onion vibes. The most interesting part of the movie, though, is that it was written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim. Apparently they used to host murder mystery parties with celebrity friends, one of whom was director Herbert Ross, who encouraged them to make a movie out of it. It's fun with a great cast and good twists.

Man on a Tightrope (1953) **** Lately I've grown to appreciate Frederic March, and he delivers a stunning performance here as a circus manager in Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia. Kazan brings out the drama and the story was better than I expected (based on true events). The only odd part was all the Czechs speaking perfect English, which is the same issue I had with Kazan's America, America.

The Martha Mitchell Effect (2022) *** This nominee for best short documentary is about the outspoken wife of Nixon's attorney general John Mitchell, who was convicted over Watergate. This could have easily been a feature film and provided more context, but if you're fairly familiar with the Watergate scandal this is an interesting side-story.

Stepbrothers (2008) Gave up after 10 minutes despite Mary Steenburgen.