What movies did you see last week? (9/19-9/25)

Analyze This

Billy and Bobby D were having fun, can't ask for much more than that.

3 of note all of which can't be mentioned without talking about their 3rd acts:

Barbarian - Effective, almost a guilty pleasure type horror which takes 2 diverse storylines, links them and ties them together while deftly showing the choices men make - both seemingly innocuous and purposely monstrously awful (ugh, men! ammirite?) into a film staged in mostly 1 setting.

Very watchable...more watchable than "good"......? Maybe......maybe.....but still...

Triangle of Sadness - Too long, too obvious satire in the style of Buñuel but done with so much virtuouso skill in scene construction and odd in its rhythms and effect of when scenes cut out or leave you that it's almost a quintessential example of the form......somewhat love it or hate it....... but if you are inclined toward its worldview....more likely to love. Much of it is fantastic .......the third act is necessary but less inspired and you feel the length more then.....

Pearl - One of the years most fully realized movies - my #3 of the year so far - and it's arguably more satifying than the films I have at 1 and 2 tbh and certainly more satisfying than X which it serves as a prequel for......incredibly sharp in concept, setting, and execution in ways that X just used as window dressing.......Pearl uses its setting to layer theme upon theme and to drive the central character into a terrifying corner....

Mia Goth is truly spectacular - she should be nominated for an Oscar - and that's not hyperbole - and the portrayal is quite complex in how all the connective thematic points are conveyed to us too - like sexuality without release (sorta) ("I'm married"!) and release (sorta)....... through Death.......and thats just one example - there's more.......

....it's a killer movie ......and a bloody good time ......ok, ok I'll stop......

Pleasure
Pearl
Vengeance
Inception
The Specialist
Orphan
Don’t Worry Darling
The Princess (2022)
Scream (2022)

Stirring in some of last week's watches since I missed that post.....

Rewatches:
The Closet (2001)
Starter for 10 (2006)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Me Myself & Irene (2000)
The Replacements (2000)
Police Academy (1984)
True Lies (1994) JLC saves it!

a very SZilla double ft of Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974) - close but no Hedorah! and Shaw Bros' The Jade Rashka (1968) - I need to see more from Cheng Pei Pei, she predates my beloved kung-fu-queen Angela Mao!

Firsts, all 2022s:

Pearl (2022) “Au revoir!” Ti West’s best yet. Perhaps the year’s best too. pacinoyes review nails it. It feels a little like a miracle to have a horror so vivid and colorful in a non-neon way, and old school in a not totally jokey way. It’s a psychobiddy slasher for the (younger) ages. A little camp goes a long way, as they say (or don’t they?). Mia Goth a riveting perf of starry-eyed ley, tragic aloofness and bubble-popped madness. 7.5 or so!

Dinner in America (2022) What an expectedly beautiful, well-played movie… deliberately un-pc, with clever semi-satire on the hypocrisy of adulthood, the rudder of taunts, and xeroxed family values, with a very funny misfit main duo that moves you - a little like Buffalo 66 or Dogfight (1991) or if John Bender fell for the Sheedy character in Breakfast Club. Two very good perfs from Emily Skeggs and underrated-actor Kyle Gallner. 7 or more.

Emily the Criminal (2022) Solid no-nonsense movie, upped and blazoned by Aubrey Plaza’s great perf of pique, shame, and fed-up rebounds. Guillermo Del Toro interestingly compared it to a pre-code crime pic. 7

The Cathedral (2022) Wes Anderson on a shoestring budget? The director says his influences are more Bresson and Tarkovsky’s The Mirror. Made for under $200k, it’s a considerably formalist and lingeringly sad family saga, spanning decades, within distilled frames of middle class Long Island. 7

Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2022) Sean Baker’s X Men? Kept reminding me of John Sayles’ Brother From Another Planet. Smoothly made, a faux fable that sets up a horror but becomes a sweet-natured fugitive pic - narratively very uneven and plays vague and avoids having anything to say, but I liked it. Jeon Jong-seo (Burning, The Call) is more talented than this perf suggests — a shockingly good and junk-food-fed Kate Hudson the cast standout. 6.5

Dog (2022) Way more hijinks-driven than expected, but not quite a Comedy; thumbs up for dog lovers. Channing Tatum’s directing debut. One of his best, freest perfs too. 6

House of Darkness (2022) Another fireless and bogus LaBute of late; actually not bad… bc it brought to mind Jean Rollin - rare for a recent American movie with recognizable names. It’s missing another twist or like a whole third act. Justin Long (w/ Tusk, Barbarian, etc) sort of staking out this frat-bred flirt character showing up to daunting places for his just desserts. 5.5-6

Athena (2022) Some astonishing technically-accomplished sequences, the vortices of revolt and political fury. One’s going east, one’s going west, So what? One-note narrative undertow drowns you out. 5.5

Speak No Evil (2022) Good setup and use of the Danish/Dutch language barrier which presses the stress, but it fails as a slow-burn horror - it’s moronically bleak and the twist is predicted. Would’ve worked better just as a cringe-comedy. 5

X (2022) Strong first 25min but the air goes out, it’s suddenly zapped of ideas, fun, etc, it feels given up on, and awkwardly murks to the end. This guy made Pearl??? 5

Claire's Knee (1970) - Fine, just like Rohmer's other Moral tales have been. Not my cup of tea but I can see the good in it. 7/10

The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991) - Great silly fun. As is typical of ZAZ, the jokes come at you a mile a minute, whether it be through dialogue or visual gags in the background. 7/10

Goyokin (1969) - Whereas Three Outlaw Samurai and Sword of the Beast felt more like the Anthony Mann westerns of the 1950s, this feels like Gosha going into spaghetti western/Sergio Corbucci territory.  Not quite as good as the prior two but still top tier. 8/10

See How They Run (2022) - I love murder mysteries and I love Sam Rockwell, so this was pretty much going to work for me unless there was some dire mistakes.  Fortunately, there weren't as I found this to be quite enjoyable. Saoirse Ronan is a standout while Rockwell I actually felt was a little underutilized. It's a fun breakdown of the Agatha Christie mysteries. 7/10

Wild Tales (2014) - Genuinely fantastic all around. 9/10

The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994) - Despite it's fantastic Oscars set piece at the end, the rest of the movie can't keep up with the original or the Smell of Fear, but for a 33rd (and 1/3rd) installment in the franchise, it's still enjoyable. 6/10

Story of Women (1988) - Huppert is utterly fantastic and Cluzet is damn good too, but this is the first Chabrol that really didn't do it for me. 5/10

The Man from Laramie (1955) - Of the three Mann/Stewart westerns i've seen, i'd probably rank this in 2nd after Winchester '73 and a little above The Naked Spur.  Stewart and Crisp are great.  There was something a bit off with O'Donnell's character's ending though. 7/10

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) - Clouseau works better when he's not in a James Bond-esque adventure.  It's fine but a step below the previous film. 7/10

Shadow of the Vampire (2000) - An unusual film with a bleak ending but I was into it. Dafoe is wonderful here. 7/10

Lessons of Darkness (1992) - Herzog documentary of the oil disaster in Kuwait. The film is pretty open in its view here, allowing the audience to take in the images before them on their own terms. Felt as close to Koyaanisqatsi as possible, but unique enough with that Herzog-ian flare. 8/10

Act of Violence (1948) - Great film noir from Zinnemann.  The cast is uniformly great, with Janet Leigh, Mary Astor, Robert Ryan, Phyllis Thaxter, and Berry Kroeger, but this is Van Heflin's film. There's a terror that he carries throughout that's less so Ryan than it is what Ryan represents - the consequences of Heflin's wartime actions coming back to haunt him. Despite his best efforts, it's inescapable. Almost a proto-It Follows. 8/10

When Worlds Collide (1951) - A terrible bore with maybe the least interesting love triangle put on film. The end of the world is at hand, and none of these elitists feel terrified or disturbed over the countless losses that will occur. Barbara Rush and Larry Keating's father-daughter duo are maybe the worst example of this. There's some good effects here but also some incredibly cartoonish ones meant to be taken straight. 4/10