movies

A movie reviewer I watch made a poll about your favourite Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Realised I haven't seen any of them. There was a showing of One Battle After Another at an almost perfect time, so I went to watch it.

I loved it. I hope this is will all his movies, but it almost felt timeless. They do have modern phones and cars, but it could easily be set in any time period.

One Battle After Another in 70mm

Highly recommend it. But I also highly recommend pretty much every Paul Thomas Anderson film.

Last week I picked up 2001:A Space Odyssey for 13 euro on 4K Blu-ray. That was a real treat.

This week I watched the new superman movie. I was excited going in and disappointed by the mid point.

It feels like marvel trash to me. Definitely would not watch again.

Also watched Licorice Pizza. I really enjoyed that. It's a coming of age movie. Really good acting from Alana Haim (from the band Haim).

I saw Conjuring: The Last Rites in a movie theater. It's the first movie I've been to see in a theater since Covid. I was offered free tickets and a beer. Worth it.

Heat (1995)

For me it was one of those movies that somehow you've never watched even though it looks like a perfect fit. I watched it last night and it is excellent. The cast is absolutely stacked and I didn't know who I was rooting for until near the end.

I was crossing over from French to German stuff last week, but I'll start with the unrelated before getting to Germany.

• Z for Zachariah (2015): the plot is not that of book by the same name but rather seems an update on The World, the Flesh and the Devil, which was too cautious about race issues. In a way, this fixes that, but there's a (spoiler) detail that made it irritating.
  
  SPOILER gives away ending and director intent
  

  The director intended to let us know that John killed Caleb, as can be seen when Ann figures that much by pushing a glass until it falls -- but that death should have crashed the man into the trough for the water wheel, and we see that it is still in place afterwards. This made me search for WTF was supposed to happen. An easy rewrite would have the cliff tie off point to the side with a brief shot of Caleb moving from the trough to the side before going up. Sloppy to not do that.
  
• Hard Truths(2024): Bitter and scared woman bitches about everything. Poignant and sardonic, it doesn't feel right to label it 'bittersweet comedy' because it felt deeper than that. Exceptionally good.
• I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020): Charlie Kaufman twisted this story into a nonlinear mashup of times and faces, but the theme might be summarized as an introspection on desire and one's own shortcomings. After viewing, it needs time to settle, and possibly to rewatch in a year or two.
• Submarine (2010): Fails bechdel test. Many films do -- including the previous Kaufman piece -- but here I really wanted some female voices instead of yet another tale of a boy's first love from only his point of view. It's a perfectly fine film if that's what you want, but it left me flat.
• Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (2007): Documentary on Seeger. Good info, some song clips. I wasn't engrossed, but I did learn interesting bits.
• Our Man in Havana (1959): Graham Greene story starring Alec Guinness in satire of spy stories before we had any 007 flicks. Set in Cuba at a time when Castro only allowed filming if the Baptise rule was shown in the negative. Cast also includes Noël Coward and Burl Ives. Not bad except for an editing issue near the end that bothered me, but generally skippable if it weren't for the historical aspects.
• A Covenant with Death (1967): Mediocre movie about a Hispanic judge protagonist with non-white culture. So innovative!? Maybe then, but strained now.
• Peter von Kant (2022): French! Ozon! After watching this, I had to rewatch its source, and after watching both, I decided that this was tighter and more 'fun', but it blows the point of the whole movie in the final minutes... but perhaps by condensing the possible interpretations of the original into fewer possibilities gives more people satisfaction.
• The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972): German! Fassbinder at his best! Petra rants about herself while commanding her silent assistant. I much prefer this version to its remake.
• Fox and His Friends (1975): Fassbinder. Ignorant carny buys lottery ticket while hooking up with upper class gay guy -- and wins! Now introduced to a more sophisticated set, he doesn't realize he's getting used. It's a compassionate look at the tragedy of it. Also, there's a fair amount of full frontal male nudity, but no sex. Moderately recommended.
• Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974): A look at race relations at a time when the older generation remembers WWII, a German widow (with her Polish immigrant husband's last name) falls in love with an Arab. Everyone freaks out. What to do? Fassbinder handles it perfectly.
• World on a Wire (1973) (Welt am Draht): I wrote about this last week over here. Highly recommended, but veerrrryy long and probably only interesting to people wanting to study film. Notice the use of glass and mirrors. Both this and the totally skippable The Thirteenth Floor are based on the book Simulacron-3 -- but this version is the good one.

Valkyrie (2008):

"a reasonably entertaining drama about the time Tom Cruise tried to kill Hitler" about sums it up. Rescued (just) by worthiness and accuracy of the treatment of its subject matter. Mission Impossible in Berlin. Would have benefitted from less English actors and more German. Makes me want to rewatch Downfall (2004).

Flow (2024):

Second time watching this - magical and moving, still. Had the family mesmorised.

I just did a rewatch of Hostiles.

Man it is so good!

Last night I checked out Force of Nature: The Dry 2.

Yeah that was a mistake. I dig Eric Bana. The first movie, The Dry, was pretty good as was the book it is based on.

The Dry 2, just like The Dry is a murder mystery that also has a sub plot involving the Eric Bana’s character’s past. In the first movie the mystery was well done as was the back story and they were intertwined.

In this movie the murder mystery was too convoluted and the whole thing was very much a hodgepodge of Roshomon and a Hercule Periot story. Also the back story was kind of horseshit and so poorly shoe horned into the current day murder mystery.

Don’t Look Up - it is like a documentary of the Trump administration, but less evil. I didn’t finish it because it got really cringy half way through.

Kick-Ass 3.5/5: We wanted to watch some superhero shit and my friend had missed this. It's the right mix of grounded and cartoony. Could use less of late 2000s "gotta get the nerd laid" energy but it's hardly the worst offender

Lawrence of Arabia 5/5: Incredible. 3 hours and 48 minutes and the only thing I'd cut is 5 minute orchestral opening. Absolutely worth seeing in a theater if you can. What unbelievably compelling man, I understand following him across the desert. It's shocking that Alec Guinness gets away with his role but fuck does he nail it

E.T. 3/5: Hit shuffle on plex and this is what I got. Spielberg is really good at nailing heart in his movies. Which is impressive because that's a sort of nebulous thing that's hard to define. The movie lays the groundwork to justify a child's love saving E.T.'s life but it's still an overdone narrative