Completing the trilogy: If.... Directed by Lindsay Anderson • 1969 • United Kingdom Starring Malcolm McDowell, David Wood, Richard Warwick Lindsay Anderson’s IF.... is a daringly anarchic vision of British society, set in a boarding school in late-sixties England. Before Kubrick made his mischief iconic in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Malcolm McDowell made a hell of an impression as the insouciant Mick Travis, who, along with his school chums, trumps authority at every turn, finally emerging as a violent savior in the vicious games of one-upmanship played by both students and masters. Mixing color and black and white as audaciously as it mixes fantasy and reality, IF…. remains one of cinema’s most unforgettable rebel yells.
I just watched Army Of Shadows by Melville. I love him and had never seen it. Wow! I loved it. One of his best. I also re-watched Bob Le Flambeur. Another good Melville film. Up next will be more Melville. Probably Un Flic and Le Deuxième Souffle. Army of Shadows leaves at the end of the month if you are interested.
Pale Flower alternates with Harakiri for my all-time favorite film. Love, love, love everything about that film.
Charming! Adventures of a Dentist Directed by Elem Klimov • 1965 • Soviet Union This Russian dark comedy follows a supremely gifted dentist who is ridiculed and completely ostracized by his colleagues.
On a lazy Sunday afternoon: Alphaville Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1965 • France Starring Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff A cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry, Godard’s irreverent journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional films of all time. Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60.
Stunning! Safe Criterion Collection Edition #739 Julianne Moore gives a breakthrough performance as Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife in the late 1980s who comes down with a debilitating illness. After the doctors she sees can give her no clear diagnosis, she comes to believe that she has frighteningly extreme environmental allergies. A profoundly unsettling work from the great American director Todd Haynes, SAFE functions on multiple levels: as a prescient commentary on self-help culture, as a metaphor for the AIDS crisis, as a drama about class and social estrangement, and as a horror film about what you cannot see. This revelatory drama was named the best film of the 1990s in a “Village Voice” poll of more than fifty critics.
I'd never heard of it before but just saw it go by and I like Todd Haynes. It has tremendous visual intelligence, IMO.
Now this: Orlando Directed by Sally Potter • 1992 • United Kingdom Starring Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane, Quentin Crisp Based on Virginia Woolf’s 1928 classic “Orlando: A Biography,” Sally Potter’s sumptuous fantasy stars a sublime Tilda Swinton as the eponymous seventeenth-century nobleman who, commanded by Queen Elizabeth I (played by legendary raconteur Quentin Crisp) to never age, voyages through four hundred years of English history, first as a man, then as a woman. The spectacular sets, breathtaking costumes (which serve as the inspiration for this year’s Met Gala), and Swinton’s androgynous performance style give captivating expression to Woolf’s text, a playful, ahead-of-its-time exploration of gender roles and fluidity that remains as fresh and surprising today as it was in the 1920s.
I watched "If ..." last night, a film that had somehow eluded me all these years despite my desire to see it. My reaction within the first few minutes was "A ha!" ... because this film clearly was the inspiration for one of my favorite half hours in TV history - the first "Ripping Yarns" ("Tomkinson's School Days").
This really is a strangely philosophical work: Vernon, Florida Directed by Errol Morris • 1981 • United States Vernon is a town in the Florida panhandle surrounded by swamps. Here, Errol Morris found the quietly fascinating subjects for the follow-up to his galvanizing debut, GATES OF HEAVEN. As ever humane yet sharply focused, Morris lets his camera subjects pontificate and perambulate the environs of this seemingly unremarkable little community. The result is a strangely philosophical work that cemented its director’s standing as an important figure in American film.
This seemed like a relevant title to watch right now. I watched it last night. I loved every minute. A new movie to add to my list of favorites.
This was quite good, and surprisingly felt longer than it's 59 minute runtime, but in a good way. I really enjoyed a lot of the music, too, though I don't see it mentioned in any credits. It reminded me of Foday Musa Suso. Not surprising, I guess, considering the proximity of Senegal, where this was filmed, and Suso's home country of The Gambia. Black Girl Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project Ousmane Sembène was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived, as well as the most renowned African director of the twentieth century—and yet his name still deserves to be better known in the rest of the world. He made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring BLACK GIRL Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot—about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally—into a complexly layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world. Featuring a moving central performance by M’Bissine Thérèse Diop, BLACK GIRL is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement—and one of the essential films of the 1960s. Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with the Sembène Estate; INA, Institut National de l’Audiovisuel; Éclair; and the Centre National de Cinématographie. Restoration funded by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.
Now this is Far Out! Invention for Destruction Directed by Karel Zeman • 1958 • Czechoslovakia Starring Lubor Tokoš, Arnošt Navrátil, František Šlégr This eye-popping escapade revolves around a scientist and his doomsday machine—and the pirates who will stop at nothing to gain possession of it. Freely adapting the fiction of Jules Verne, and inspired by Victorian line engravings, Karel Zeman surrounds his actors with animated scenery of breathtaking intricacy and complexity, constructing an impossibly vivid proto-steampunk world. Released abroad at the turn of the 1960s, INVENTION FOR DESTRUCTION went on to become one of the most internationally successful Czechoslovak films of all time.
This is kind of hilarious: The Anderson Tapes Directed by Sidney Lumet • 1971 • United States Starring Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, Martin Balsam A prescient vision of the rise of the surveillance state, this paranoid heist thriller stars Sean Connery as Duke Anderson, an ex-con just out of prison who hatches a daring scheme to rob every unit in the swanky Manhattan apartment complex where his girlfriend (Dyan Cannon) lives. Little does he know, invisible eyes and ears are monitoring his every move. Director Sidney Lumet keeps the tension mounting while a delightfully offbeat secondary cast—including Martin Balsam, comedian Alan King, and a young Christopher Walken—lends colorful support.
I just signed up and the first film I watched was Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala, which I haven't seen since the late 70's. Magnificent!
This you gotta see! The Daytrippers Criterion Collection Edition #1001 With its droll humor and bittersweet emotional heft, the feature debut of writer-director Greg Mottola announced the arrival of an unassumingly sharp-witted new talent on the 1990s indie film scene. When she discovers a love letter written to her husband (Stanley Tucci) by an unknown paramour, the distraught Eliza (Hope Davis) turns to her tight-knit Long Island family for advice. Soon the entire clan—strong-willed mom (Anne Meara), taciturn dad (Pat McNamara), and jaded sister (Parker Posey) with pretentious boyfriend (Liev Schreiber) in tow—has squeezed into a station wagon and headed into Manhattan to find out the truth, kicking off a one-crazy-day odyssey full of unexpected detours and life-changing revelations. Performed with deadpan virtuosity by a top-flight ensemble cast, THE DAYTRIPPERS is a wry and piercing look at family bonds stretched to the breaking point.
