Tough for me to stick with, too. Just noticed the array of LGBTQ titles that have been available all month long. Most I've seen. Queersighted and Pride and Protest are the two features which I'm assuming are up to honor June Pride.
As with Greed & Lynch's Dune, this is a movie screaming for a restoration of the director's original cut/vision, but the footage has been destroyed. Friedkin directed The Boys in the Band - one of the few movies he made that he doesn't hate - and one might want to check that out as a bookend.
Quite. I was hoping to see Boys featured on the channel (as well as three or four other LGBTQ classics) this month but copyrights are retrospective killers.
Ooo - I realize I should have mentioned The Magnificent Ambersons too, but that movie actually survived its butchery pretty well. Saw a bit recently on TCM; absolutely incredible even with 1/3 or so missing...
Machine Gun McCain (1969, Giuliano Montaldo) Watching it now. It’s part of the Starring Gena Davis retrospective this month, which I’m hoping continues through July. I’d love to a doc on how this one came together. It includes Rowlands’ hubby, John Cassavetes, and familiar collaborator, Peter Falk and is based on the pulp novel, Candyleg, by Ovid Demaris, which with a title like that I have to find a copy.
So I’m 1/3 into The Driller Killer, and: while this is unquestionably an odd choice for the Criterion Channel no matter what, based on what I’ve seen so far, anyone looking for any sort of slasher flick is going to be disappointed. But if you’re looking for a document of arty drug-addled poseurs in late ‘70s NYC, you could do worse.
Terrible post form. Reminds me not to make 'em from my phone. It's the Gena Rowlands retro that I hope continues (and expands!) and that poster's the pitts. I wasn't even drunk.
Also watched the British horror thriller Kill List last night, and it was kind of underwhelming. It came off like the writer and director had a basic story to tell and a bunch of cool scenes they wanted to include but couldn’t figure out a good way to tie it all together at the end, so they shot what they had and went with the “this movie doesn’t spoon-feed you, it leaves things to your imagination...” approach.
The Inheritance (1962, Kobayashi) On his deathbed, a wealthy businessman announces that his fortune is to be split equally among his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown. A bevy of lawyers and associates begin machinations to procure the money for themselves, resorting to the use of impostors and blackmail. Yet all are outwitted by the cunning of the man's secretary (Keiko Kishi), in this entertaining condemnation of unchecked greed. -CC First time watching this one. Another classic from 1962. Came across the above video featuring distinctive Kobayashi touches from some of his famous movies.
Well, it looks promising... Neonoir: 27 Films FEATURING: Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Across 110th Street (1972), The Long Goodbye (1973), Chinatown (1974)**, Night Moves (1975), Farewell, My Lovely (1975), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), The American Friend (1977), The Big Sleep (1978), Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), The Onion Field (1979), Body Heat (1981), Thief (1981)*, Blow Out (1981), Cutter’s Way (1981), Blood Simple (1984), Body Double (1984), The Hit (1984), Trouble in Mind (1985), Manhunter (1986), Mona Lisa (1986), The Bedroom Window (1987), Homicide (1991), Swoon (1992), Suture (1993), The Last Seduction (1994), Brick (2005)** **US only But, honestly, Chinatown is the only title I'm exited to watch again. There are a few I haven't seen so perhaps my initial impression is unfair but this lineup seems a bit paltry for for post-postwar noir.
Re: NickySee's post, been NeoNoiring the last few nights. The films drive home again how easy it is to make a parody of the genre, and how hard it is to get straight. "Body Heat" still works, on both levels: it is a quite obvious collage of Noir elements, yet it plays them with affection, not just for laughs or cleverness. A truly enjoyable ride for all the right reasons, and the cast seems to enjoy it too. "Farewell my Lovely" is also delightful in its re-doing of the 40s settings, with Mitchum effortlessly great as Marlowe, regardless of his age. Director Dick Richards respects the material and handles it very well. The 70s were a good time to do "period re-creations", on 35mm film, with more traditional filming techniques, and with film makers who were well-versed in the earlier decades of film-making. Then you get the opposite: ""The Big Sleep" by Michael Winner, from '78, is everything it shouldn't be: set in 70s England, cheap-looking, inconsistently acted (apart from Mitchum) with a cast of every aging British great they could round up. "Across 110th Street" is fabulous, a loud reminder of how neutered corporate film-making has gotten over the decades. It is not what I would call "Noir", more a Blacksploitation-Meets-Dirty Harry blend that really explodes. Anthony Quinn dials down the mannerisms and delivers an aging cop who is furious at the "social workers" who interfere with his beatings of suspects, while Yaphet Kotto is a by-the-book detective who is determined to succeed and earn respect, regardless of color. All of this is set in (and shot in) NY/Harlem, and it spares no one. It is matter-of-factly rough, rude and violent, with a lot of social commentary peppered throughout. Not a masterpiece, but a very honest film in its way. C.
Absolutely. I find it hard to believe that the titles chosen were the best titles that Criterion muster for this promo. Enjoyed your snapshot reviews of those you've watched so far. I got halfway through Rian Johnson's Brick before it became almost unbearable. The commitment the high school age cast puts into the highly stylized dialogue, violence and twisted scenarios- a deliberate throwback to the Dashiel Hammett/Raymond Chandler serials - is admirable but neither convincing nor exceptional. These might be savvy suburban teens but hardly old (or talented) enough to wear the classic world weary style of classic crime noir dialogue comfortably. Johnson tries to compensate by resorting to slick editing, odd camera angling and increasing the intensity of what sounds like a moog synthesizer but there's an obvious ceiling to what the production value will ameliorate. The noir tropes feel like tropes. If the film was gutsy enough to be a satire it might have been more interesting. For example... The American Soldier (1970, Fassbinder) Another first-feature deliberate noir flick, this time by one of my favorite directors, R.W. Fassbinder. Although it's on CC it's not a part of the Neo Noir retrospective. Too bad. Fassbinder was fearless. And even if early efforts don't work they're amusing in spurts.
Brick is one of my absolute favorite films from its decade. I was lucky to catch it during its theatrical run. I also caught the wonderful The Last Seduction in the theater. Linda Fiorentino was expected to nab an Oscar nomination, but the Academy disqualified the film on a technicality... Shalom, y'all! L. Bangs
It is possible I’m misinterpreting what you mean by “first-feature”, but The American Soldier came several films into Fassbinder’s career. His feature-length debut was Love Is Colder Than Death.
First deliberate noir flick is what I meant to convey, though Love certainly has noir elements in it.
Eyes of Laura Mars (1978, Irvin Kershner) Faye Dunaway is Laura Mars, a controversial high-fashion photographer whose sensational, erotic-violent portraits of models bear a curious resemblance to the crime-scene photos of an unknown serial killer’s victims. When Laura begins telepathically witnessing a string of brutal murders, it’s up to Lieutenant John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones) to unravel the mystery. This Neonoir entry is easily one of the poorest. Well, it's a bad movie, even as a routine thriller. The poster/creator of the film's backstory (above - with spoilers!!) quite rightly characterizes it as Disco Giallo. Giallo, because it is an inheritor of the "Italian thriller-horror genre that has mystery or detective elements and often contains slasher, crime fiction, psychological thriller, psychological horror, sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural horror elements" (Wiki) and Disco, because of the often loud-playing contemporary soundtrack. But I can't spot the noir elements in it. Maybe someone else can enlighten me on that score. Utter silliness. And a waste of Tommy Lee Jones (not to speak of Dunaway). But George Lucas was apparently impressed with director, Kershner, and got him to direct one of my all time faves, The Empire Strikes Back, so what do I know? At the very least, see it for the wonderfully skeezy late 70s New York City streets.
The list of titles leaving on July 31 is, frankly (outside of Berlanga), the best promo of the summer so far. Some of my first-time-viewing must-sees over the next 10 days: He Ran All The Way (1951, John Berry) Pressure (1976, Horace Ové) California Split (1975, Robert Altman) The Blue Angel (1930, Josef Von Sternberg) The Last Sunset (1961, Robert Aldrich) Spartacus (1960, Stanley Kubrick) - the one Kubrick I've avoided Dissolution (2010, Dina Menkes) - Women directors don't come round too often Queen of Diamonds (1991, Nina Menkes) Girlfriends (1978, Claudia Weill) Sun Don't Shine (2012, Amy Seimetz) Diary of a Chambermaid (1964, Luis Buñuel) - Moreau & Buñuel? Should be permanent title! The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci) Odds Against Tomorrow (1960, Robert Wise) - Belafonte & Wise? Hmmm Pierrot le fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard) Grisgris (2013, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun) and an always fun revisit of Hal Ashby's The Last Detail.
He Ran All The Way (1951, John Berry) Always interesting to watch, John Garfield, has always been one of my favorites from the classic Hollywood era. New Yorker thing, probably. He was also pretty talented. If he hadn't been I don't think this movie would have gone over as well. Dalton Trumbo and Hugo Butler adapted the novel by Sam Ross about a tense, emotionally troubled but street-wise hustler who participates in a robbery that goes wrong. He gets away but holes up with a family who he takes hostage to prevent discovery. It's not noir (in my book) but borrows the style and quickly turns into a domestic drama, which is actually what it really is from the beginning. Shelly Winters turns in a great nuanced performance as, believe it or not, Garfield's love interest, like she would with Monty Clift in the bigger hit of 1951, A Place In The Sun. The above post makes a nice intro to the film and the outro is equally as good. The movie is definitely worth a viewing; a must-see for Garfield and Winters admirers.
This is a great documentary! Just a few minor things I didn't like, but I am thrilled to finally see this. I saw af Klint's exhibition in Malaga 10 years ago. An amazing painter. Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint Directed by Halina Dyrschka • 2019 • Germany Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term existed, a visionary, trailblazing figure who, inspired by spiritualism, modern science, and the riches of the natural world, began in 1906 to reel out a series of huge, colorful, sensual, strange works without precedent in painting. The subject of a recent smash retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, af Klint was for years an all-but-forgotten figure in art-historical discourse, before her long-delayed rediscovery. Director Halina Dryschka’s dazzling, course-correcting documentary explores not only the life and craft of af Klint, but also the process of her mischaracterization and erasure by both a patriarchal narrative of artistic progress and capitalistic determination of artistic value.
"Chungking Express" (1994, Wong Kar-wai) What a mess. Even if you want to have a completely eccentric universe within a film, it still has to have some cohesion, otherwise it just becomes 'look at what I can do', much like a fair amount of the French New Wave. Apart from the universality of lost love and how guys pine for exes, the film is a beautifully shot exercise in directorial indulgence. The first story involving drugs and a mysterious woman just stops when things get interesting; the second story dissolves into a bizarre and increasingly grating "ain't it cute" affair, with Brigitte Lin's semi-deranged girl outstaying her welcome very quickly, and Kaneshiro's cop character being portrayed as so dumb (or disturbed, given all the stuffed animals he has) that he doesn't pick up on anything going on in his apartment. Of course, this is where the lovers of the film will go: "Ah, you don't get the quirkiness, the joy, the abandoning of conventional (fill in blank)". I love films that push the envelope, have a shelf dedicated to them. A film doesn't have to make conventional sense to be wonderful. It does, however, have to have its own internal logic that doesn't sacrifice the established characters on the Altar of Coolness just for the hell of it, because at that point you're watching the director, not the film. Kar-wai really is an auteur, and with DP Doyle, he crafted "In the Mood for Love" and "Days of Being Wild" which are powerful works. We'll be doing more of the Criterion line-up to see how the other films compare. C.
I think I liked the film more than you did, I but agree with the general thrust of your post. The viewer is always aware that she/he is watching a film, there's no opportunity to invest in the plot (or plots, in this case). That being said, it's certainly never dull and held my interest as a series of riddles to solve rather than a coherent story.
Man I just watched this movie and I couldn’t have a more opposite opinion! I thought it was the best movie I had watched in ages and couldn’t get enough. I think it’s a classic.
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959, Robert Wise) The Concerto of the Desperadoes; three down-on-their-luck New Yorkers scheme to make one last big score with a bank heist. Wise didn't have his usual Hollywood budget and shot this one like an indie feature. Harry Belafonte, as producer, most definitely had his black agenda. If the cast was not A list material it might not have worked at all. But Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Ed Begley, Shelly Winters, Gloria Grahame and a host of great cameo performances make it go. And, despite the trite ending, this one really does play like a nice chamber piece. One of the better New York Noirs I've seen. Recommended. (There's a decent copy on YouTube, too.)
