71 : into the fire (2010, in korean)

Korea. 1950. The North Korean army is advancing rapidly. A relatively untrained group of student soldiers is left alone to defend a place.

Very well-photographed.

The reason to see this movie is Cha Seung-Won, playing a North Korean officer. He's in maybe 10% of the movie. 6'2" of magnificent presence. The white cap looks fantastic on him.

There are two shots that I would like to turn into wallpaper for my house. Both have the sun behind him. One happens when he goes to speak to the student soldiers. The other happens on the field from which he's staging a battle.

the freshman (1990)

Matthew Broderick becomes involved with a shady Little Italy businessman, his family, a komodo dragon, and a goofy young B. D. Wong.

I love Bruno Kirby.

Matthew Broderick looks good in tshirt and sweatpants.

hot fuzz (edgar wright, 2007)

Masterfully made. Timothy Dalton is delicious. Paddy Considine and Rafe Spall are fantastic as the Andy's.

zack and miri make a porno (kevin smith, 2008)

Justin Long is freaky good as a gay porn star. I like to think that his performance was inspired by Trevor Knight.

wedding present (1936)

Cary Grant lights a match on his shoe. And sings the Schnitzelbank song!

this is the night (1932)

Cary Grant as a javelin thrower.

The first two thirds of the movie are a joy, including some sequences that aren't really song and dance, but rhythmic studies on dialogue and movement and sound effects.

The last third is weighed down by the resolution of the Lili Damita / Roland Young arc.

bonnie and clyde (1967)

I liked Bonnie's hair better the way Clyde said he didn't like it.

I would have totally gone out with Gene Hackman.

It occurred to me that the people who made this had roughly as many memories of 1930-1933 (or as much access to same) as people who are now making movies about 1973-1976.

toy story 3 (2010)

Spectacular.

alice in wonderland (1933)

Yes, it's grotesque but I'd've liked it to have also been funny. Cary Grant is probably one of the few people that could deliver Lewis Carroll's lines in a way that I'd find funny. But he draws the unfortunate part of the Mock Turtle. His costume is such that you don't see his face.

an affair to remember (1957)

No one in this movie seems to think that it is weird that Deborah Kerr's character (or the actress) is so square.

gunga din (1939)

Cary Grant is awesomely beautiful in so many of his movies, and this might be his most awesomest beautifulest.

Part of the magic is the lovely bright black and white.

A bigger part is that Cary's hair is not sleek here but cuddly.

once upon a honeymoon (1942)

A lot of movie. Ginger Rogers was a little too much (accent show-off), but there was a lot too much here, so it's of a piece.

Cary Grant is nicely mischievous while fitting Ginger for her new clothes.

once upon a time (1944)

My first pair of longies!

iron man 2 (2010)

Worked for me. Thought the new element bit was cheesy.

Nice to see Sam Rockwell in things. Maybe I'd have liked his part more nuanced?

Mickey Rourke did a very nice job.

bringing up baby (hawks, 1938)

Cary Grant with his hair messed up.

she done him wrong (1933)

hot saturday (1932)

north by northwest (hitchcock, 1959)

thirty day princess (1934)

Sylvia Sidney is cute as a button.

symbol (hitoshi matsumoto, 2009)

secret reunion (2010)

Song Kang Ho might be the best movie star working.

yatterman (miike, 2009)

Miike turns a PowerRangersy 70s Japanese kids show into a movie. The villainess's bathroom scene is wonderfully art decorated. Check out the nail polish.

valkyrie (2008)

Thomas Kretschmann!

macgruber (2010)

OK

breathless (godard, 1960)

So much more amazing than I had remembered.

Loved the glowing escalator that Jean Seberg takes up to her meeting with the editor in the café. Also, Belmondo's intercostals.

bring him to the greek (2010)

Russell Brand is again fantastic as Aldous Snow. Everything he says feels interesting.

micmacs (jeunet, 2009)

So excited to come across a poster of this. Jeunet and Pinon again! Danny Boon is really good.

metropolis (lang, 1927)

Thought I'd give Metropolis another try, since lots more footage has been restored. The first garden scene is gorgeous black and white. But I lost interest again and walked out twenty minutes in.

interkosmos (finn)

A trippy mockumentary about an East German space program. Wished it was good.

greenberg (baumbach, 2010)

I especially like Greta Gerwig's character and performance as the assistant to Ben Stiller's brother's family.

I sympathize with Ben Stiller's questions to the young partygoers regarding the nature of their generation. I want to know how they're different, too, but I have this nagging feeling that I'm wasting my time with these questions and they're actually just pretty much the same.

two in the wave (2009)

Documentary about Godard and Truffault, with nice footage of Léaud.

the clock (1945)

I'd been hoping someday to see more of Strangers on a Train's Robert Walker. In this love story with Judy Garland, he's aw shucks instead of scary. But still ecstatically goofy.

he's just not that into you (2009)

Walked into the living room and Ray was watching this on TV. Not bad. I think I like Scarlett Johansson in everything she does. Ginnifer Goodwin gives a lot to the movie.

hot tub time machine (2010)

Liked this a lot. Crispin Glover's performance is a joy. And impressively physical.

the bounty hunter (2010)

Jennifer Aniston as a journalist and Gerard Butler as the ex-husband ex-policeman bounty hunter. Totally worked for me. Maybe I would have liked Jason Sudeikis's part written as a more subtle example of someone Jennifer Aniston could not date. Good to see Siobhan Fallon again. Her part was written so broad but her line deliveries make it all worthwhile.

world on a wire (fassbinder, 1973)

Made for German TV. Concerns a company which has set up their computers to run a world modeled on our own so as to research in what ways our world may change in twenty years' time. Gorgeous. Great set design and camerawork. Klaus Löwitsch is impressively physical and loves to jump onto / over / down from things instead of taking the slightly longer way around.

advice for the lovelorn (1933)

Lee Tracy is an impressive actor to watch. Lots of quickfire robust facial changes. But his movies are missing something. Something like soul. They're different from Cary Grant movies, which somehow focus the truth and beauty of the world.

an american werewolf in london (1981)

The plot is somewhat beside the point. The plastic pleasures here are many. The film just has a great warm clean look to it. David Naughton and Griffin Dunne. And a hot nurse.

semi-pro (2008)

Lots of nice touches. Such as Dick Pepperfield. Felt like a real guy.

the prowler (1951)

Chewy and campy. Concerns a police officer and a married woman who reports a prowler on her property. Van Heflin plays the cop in a fruit-and-seeds way that makes me imagine a late 70s remake starring Rutger Hauer. Has anyone healthy ever really shaved with an electric razor while lying in bed?

hula (1927)

Clive Brook

lonelyhearts (1958)

Montgomery Clift. As much as I like watching Montgomery Clift act, I would have cast Anthony Perkins. Actually, I wouldn't have bothered to make this movie at all.

the big lift (1950)

Montgomery Clift as an airman in the operation to fly goods past the blockade into West Berlin. Feels fresh like the beginnings of a cinema made from scratch. If they made it again today, I hope Peter Stormare would play the Russian spy.

wolf song (1929)

I cheated on the Montgomery Clift retrospective on the basis of this photograph in the Film Forum schedule. It turns out that Gary Cooper in the movie isn't such pure liquid hotness. But ordinary hotness is ok too, and he washes up in the river.

the virginian (1929)

Gary Cooper as a lanky goofy cowboy.

favorite performances of 2009

jeremy renner : the hurt locker

zach galifianakis : up in the air and the hangover

sharlto copley : district 9

jason schwartzman : fantastic mr fox

george clooney : fantastic mr fox

michael fassbender : fish tank and inglourious basterds

diego luna : rudo y cursi

avatar (cameron, 2009, in english and na'vi)

A success. Hokey but not too hokey, given the genre. Fantastic bioluminescence. Giovanni Ribisi looks good in slacks. Liked that we got to see Sam Worthington's hair grow.

Given that lots of the fauna had a sort of double-front-limb thing going on so that the four-legged-ish animals really had six limbs, shouldn't the Na'vi have had a couple of extra arms?

As someone that likes to see things in the cinema twice or more, I love that Ray wants to see this again.

a serious man (coen, 2009, in english, yiddish and hebrew)

a woman alone (agnieszka holland, 1981, in polish)

A postwoman has a decent postal route, but the party has given her a horrible shed to live in, and she has a son to raise by herself. Boguslaw Linda is great as always as the injured man she delivers a check to. Handsomely shot.

favorite movies of 2009

1. fantastic mr fox

2. district 9

3. up

4. police, adjective

5. zombieland

6. funny people

7. the hangover

8. transformers 2 : revenge of the fallen

9. pandorum

10. inglourious basterds

11. rudo y cursi

12. k-20 : legend of the mask

sherlock holmes (guy ritchie, 2009)

I didn't care for many of the lines or a lot of the plot. And the fourth point on the cross is... Oh my! This sort of thing plays better if there's more distance between the audience and the crimesolvers, so that such plot developments are more clearly not the point but just an excuse for the aesthetics to play out. Like in Von Trier's Element of Crime.

But Robert Downey Jr was just too charming for me not to have a good time. And Jude Law was charming too.

The whole time I was watching this, I thought that Lord Blackwood was being played by Christopher Meloni. (The end credits revealed the actor to be Mark Strong.)

the white ribbon (haneke, 2009, in german)

Peepsie!

Handsomely shot. A German village. 1913/1914. 

I was impressed how long the camera wallowed in the cute-sad-cute-sadness of a scared little boy wandering the house at night looking for his big sister.

band of outsiders (godard, 1964, in french)

The guys' coats are such a part of the movie that by the time their faces are masked by stockings, there can be no doubt which man is which.

Claude Brasseur (Arthur) was on the French bobsled team! Every movement he makes is great. The dancing, the impression of how a certain guy he knows walks, the leaping through the car window.

fantastic mr fox (wes anderson, 2009)

Packed with delight. Masterpiece in red, orange, yellow and brown.

Best wiping back off with a towel in a movie ever.

district 13 : ultimatum (2009, in french)

Sequel to 2004's District 13. More parkour. Sweet. Doesn't matter if the nonparkour parts are hokey.

terribly happy (2008, in danish)

Copenhagen cop gets stationed to a small town in South Jutland. The quirky and/or menacing locals tell him over and over again that he just doesn't understand how things are done there. Tiresome.

fish tank (andrea arnold, 2009)

Of course, now I want to see every movie Michael Fassbender has been in.

archer (television, 2010)

Very funny spy-spoof cartoon on FX. Sterling Archer is hot. Like Jon Benjamin, he has piercing blue eyes.

there will be blood (p t anderson, 2007)

Took me two years to see this one. 

"Bastard from a basket" and "I drink your milkshake" are gold.

A man mining by himself. The aloneness and danger of it is impressively nauseating to watch and contemplate.

Feels like 2001 at the start. A world before we made it ours. Each technological advancement at the mine feels like a new bone or monolith.

Those who found the oil fires to be beautiful are directed to Werner Herzog's Lessons of Darkness.

the revenge : a scar that never fades (kiyoshi kurosawa, 1997, in japanese)

Forms a pair with "A Visit from Fate" (see previous post). Sho Aikawa's characters in the two movies have the same name and some of the same history. But are they really the same man? As with Kiyoshi Kurosawa's other Sho-Aikawa-starring pair of movies with guns - "Serpent's Path" and "Eyes of the Spider" - the two movies might roll in two slightly different universes.

Nice longish-distance view of a shootout. Cool car scenes with purposeful Godardly misaligned wacky music. The car is really dirty. Best use of a metal detector in a movie ever?

the revenge : a visit from fate (kiyoshi kurosawa, 1997, in japanese)

The reason I started this blog today = I saw this movie two days ago at the Walter Reade (NYC). Tonight I googled it to find out when it was made. It wasn't on IMDb. But I found this blog entry by a guy who clearly had been at the same show I was at :

http://outdamnedspot.blogspot.com/2010/02/visit-from-fate-begins-badly-with.html

On top of that, the guy follows his post with one relating Kiyoshi Kurosawa's work to Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, which I'm in the middle of reading. The coincidence made me happy and I love the guy's blog so I'll start one. (A less ambitious one.)

This blog's title is not my invention. It's Cinemaniac Jack's complaint about BAM. I hope he won't mind me using it.

So back to the movie.

I always like a Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie and this is no exception. It's an 80-minute movie with guns that forms a pair with "The Revenge : The Scar That Never Fades" (see following post). Sho Aikawa is cool as always. Beautiful sort-of-chase-and-gunfight in dense-ish vegetation.

Fans of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's other Sho-Aikawa-starring pair of movies with guns - "Serpent's Path" and "Eyes of the Spider" - may be happy to hear that "A Visit From Fate", too, has a lady with a cane.