rewatched A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan, 1957): 4/5
Wonderfully excoriating, disturbingly contemporary, and that scene at the end with the laugh track machine is some WAY before its time deep nihilistic brilliance.
Another Day in Paradise (Larry Clark, 1998): 2/5
For James-Woods-in-sleazeball-mode completists only. It's so odd to see Pete Campbell this way.
Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk, 1954): 3/5
This is no ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, but I still mostly enjoyed it as a perverse portrait of love blossoming from guilt and channeled into deception, with emotions heightened via orchestral yearning, deeply saturated Technicolor and weirdly artificial exterior views through windows.
Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992): 2.5/5
Underwhelming, but there's no denying that the film makes some sharply pointed, admirable observations about race (super-discomfiting use of the 'n' word here by two white screenwriters, even for that era, though Duke and Fishburne evidently weren't troubled by it), class and corrupt institutions. I just wish that its superficial layers were more compelling.
It's Always Fair Weather (Gene Kelley & Stanley Donan, 1955): 3/5
Just fair! I found pretty much every non-musical scene here drably pedestrian. But I'd happily watch any or all of Fair Weather's four stunners again right now (and in fact took a second look at "No Thanks" on YouTube while writing this, just for the fun of it) but have no desire whatsoever to revisit the film as a whole.
rewatched Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946): 5/5
Gotta love the self-harming tug-of-war between Bergman and Grant. “Is this where you tell me you’ve got a wife and two children waiting for you at home?” with a playful smirk on her face, to which he coldly replies, “I’ll bet you’ve heard that line a few times before.” No chuckle, no smirk, not even an impish undertone. Just straight-laced venom. Bergman is so excellent, electric and content to absorb the torment that gets relentlessly shoveled in her face. And Grant is absolutely spellbinding, embodying a cocktail of suave, insouciant, and downright bloodthirsty; a man battling inner demons of jealousy and pride, incapable of letting either one fully take the reins. This is also just a marvelous espionage flick: velvet-gloved Nazi murder plots (spoken of but never shown); the breathtaking crane down to the wine-cellar key gripped tight in Alicia's hand; a cup looming huge (but out of focus!) in the foreground to signify its poisoned contents. But that's all in support of a truly extraordinary psychological dynamic.
rewatched The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941): 5/5
If I could get a penny for every moment a gun exchanges hands I'd probably be able to afford the falcon myself. Oh wait, never mind. I've just found out that in 2013, the prop sold for $4.1 million. I guess dreams are made of lead after all.
Pink Floyd: The Wall (Alan Parker, 1982): 2/5
Less of a movie and more of a compilation of music spots that feature some plot ideas about our singer while Pink Floyd songs play over it. Basically Mamma Mia but emo.
Too Late Blues (Cassavetes, 1961): 3/5
Cassavetes second film and first studio feature. Bobby Darin delivers a surprisingly good dramatic performance.
rewatched sex, lies, and videotape (Soderbergh, 1989): 4/5
I generally dislike overt therapy onscreen yet am hypnotized by this film's relentless emotional probing. The story is basically a (heteronormative) version of TEOREMA in which candor replaces fucking as the destructive/liberating force...which actually does sound like something I'd adore, so there you go.
rewatched Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998): 3.5/5
What retroactively surprises me is how little influence LOLA wound up having. Seismic at the time, apparently the big arthouse hit of that summer...yet I can't think of many subsequent films that took its throbbing breathlessness and, well, ran with it. There's a big opening right now for a filmmaker who wants to indulge in pure pop dynamism. And should a gifted young woman make her generation's Run Lola Run, we're talking potential phenomenon.
Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954): 4.5/5
"Never seen a woman who was more of a man. She thinks like one, acts like one, and sometimes makes me feel like I'm not."
Film scholars and critics have written quite eloquently, and at greater length than I'd ever be able to, about various queer readings, as well as the film's clear anti-McCarthy subtext. I'll just simply say that this film is like a cup of coffee and a good smoke.
The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002): 2/5
Over-determined paean to female suffering. Daldry’s anonymous slick direction leans heavily on Phillip Glass’ score, like in both extended reaction shots of Moore’s dullard child. The structural conceit is just a fancy costume for its middlebrow aspirations. The dialogue is so sappy and everyone is talking like they’re quoting a bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul. Cotton scented candle dialogue. Some of the styling looks like Barnes & Nobles interiors.
rewatched The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973): 3/5
My "problem" (relative to the consensus that this is a masterpiece) mostly involves accepting Gould as Marlowe. Also, I think what I really want is for this magnificently counterintuitive conception of Marlowe not to get embroiled in this frustratingly convoluted, almost cinema-retardant plot. Every scene pitting this laid-back, befuddled incarnation of Marlowe against traditional genre heavies plays like Lebowski without the jokes. Altman and Gould try hard to break free of Chandler's novel but ultimately don't succeed enough to fully win my heart. I do very much admire the effort, though.
rewatched The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946): 3/5
Just for fun, I made a concerted effort this time to follow the plot, pretending that it actually matters, and can now definitively say that doing so ain't remotely worth the mental energy required.
rewatched To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944): 3.5/5
"You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow." Rewatched that scene half a dozen times, just to revel in its blasé magnificence.
rewatched Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959): 5/5
“A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?”
“That's *what* I got.”
Great lead performances. Flawless direction and writing. Ward Bond sporting an impossibly deep tan. The plot stopping to make room for a group of men singing a song about how they wish they were an apple.
She Came to Me (Rebecca Miller, 2023): 0.5/5
Insipid, largely nonsensical, flat-out boring, a complete tonal mess. How this film ever made it through a script meeting I’ll never know. With some of the most banal characters and haphazard storytelling, Miller has made one of the most bizarrely preposterous and smugly pretentious films of the last ten years. The main lead is a composer plagued with crippling anxiety married to his therapist who seems to have her own demons as things go into disarray when he has an affair with a woman who aggressively stalks men. Then there's the whole B-plot between the therapist's kid and a minor who has an aggressive control freak stepfather. It's a parable of chaotic toxicity that resolves itself in a strangely idyllic manner.
The Killer (David Fincher, 2023): 3/5
Great sound design, fantastic fight scene (I'm now obsessed with what a pure Fincher action movie would look like), and the opening sequence recalls Fincher's days as a music video stylist nonpareil. Not his best and it doesn't add up to much, but it's still Fincher doing what he's good at with a dollop of class rage that runs through all his work.
Quiz Lady (Jessica Yu, 2023): 2/5
There is a baseline level of entertainment just from watching Awkwafina and Sandra Oh play polar opposite sisters, but this leans too heavily on lazy broad comedy gags (the drug bit feels especially desperate) and gets weirdly affected by its trite feel good beats.
The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934): 2.5/5
Weird ass Karloff/Lugosi chiller makes no sense at all and has nothing to do with the Poe tale which allegedly "inspired" it.
Wham! (Chris Smith, 2023): 2.5/5
Not that I'm a fan, but what's truly compelling about unitalicized Wham! is the Michael–Ridgeley dynamic: Childhood best friends form a band together and conquer the world, only for one of them—the one who'd originally been dominant—to gradually realize that he's dwarfed in talent by the other. Would love to see a fictionalized version of that Star Is Born-ish rise | fall, and the real-life account might have been equally worthwhile, if not for Ridgeley apparently being the world's most understanding and emotionally stable guy, nothing but happy for his buddy's solo success. Great for him, if true; not so great for the movie.
