Godard is great when your young. He’s like reading the Beats. Soon you see that beneath all the flash there’s not really much there. I have a major soft spot for films like Pierrot le fou, Contempt and Vivre sa vie because they were the first “art house” films I got into but they don’t rank as high anymore. I think he theorized way too much about the criteria needed to be an artist before he bothered trying to be one. And most of his “innovations” aren’t really innovative after you watch a few of the great silent classics... Did anyone see the 3D film he put out? It looked batshit.

It’s funny Truffaut is being argued now. I’ve got 400 Blows in rotation just to give Truffaut another chance. I haven’t seen it in a looooong time and it is about time to reevaluate.

Last film I watched: The White Sheik. Fellini’s first solo feature. Never thought I’d see a boring Fellini film but now I have. But what can I say it still had hints of that great Fellini humor and a fun cameo from Masina as a prostitute that would end up being Cabiria in the great Nights of Cabiria.

The Fugitive is a classic.

Fellini could certainly get boring later on. City of Women? But yeah, it's rare in that period. Have you seen I Vitelloni? I love that one but it rarely gets mentioned.

i liked lo sceicco bianco

i think broadway danny rose copied it?

eta: sorta



see?

Ha! I still haven’t seen any post-Amarcord but one day I’ll get around to it.

I LOVE I Vitteloni. Very underrated and I can relate to it 100%. I tear up everytime. It is actually a weird tradition that I tend to watch it every New Year’s Eve as sort of a cleanse of the old and inspiration to be better I guess.

Yikes! Apparently To Rome With Love has a similar story? Idk just read it on wikipedia. I’m not much of a Woody fan at all.

Sweet and Lowdown is La Strada.

Plus 8 1/5 and Stardust Memories, you know.

i’ve seen 2 of his post 70s

the one about the orchestra (prova d’orchesta, i think it’s called) and the one about the ship... the ship sails on?

i liked them both

prova d’orchesta (forgive my spelling if it sucks) is hilarious.

and the ship sails on (?) was good too. not amazing great or anything but i’d definitely rewatch it. thought i can’t remember much of it ha ha ha. lots of people on a boat. like titanic but better xD

I don’t know most of these movies you guys. Makin’ me feel dumb AF.

Fugitive, now that’s cinema!

^ Recently rewatched “City of Lost Children,” and goddammit, it’s still one of my favorite movies. Not top of the heap, but still great. I think “Delicatessen” might be better as far as Jeunet films go (or even “Amelie”) but it’s been forever since I last saw that. I just know it left a pretty big impression.

Not many folks realize that Jean-Pierre Jeunet actually directed “Alien Resurrection” of all fucking things. Probably why that one feels like it has a genuine craft to it in terms of direction and cinematography, even if the story is meh. It’s definiely the best of the post-“Aliens” sequels — excluding “Prometheus” of course.
But is that weird or what? That Jeunet would attempt to crossover into American cinema with fucking a flippin’ ALIEN sequel.

Had he directed a script by, say, Wes Anderson, then I think that shit would Haagen STUCK. Anderson’s Jeunet influence is obvious as fuck, and together they could have probably done some amazing things.


(I watch foreign stuff too sometimes)

oh hell yes city of lost children was great

i don’t remember delicatessen so much but check out MICMACS. which is hilarious and rewatchable.

Ha! No hating on the Fugitive here. It’s got Tommy Lee Jones!

https://youtu.be/p7FyZgvjW0Y

Speaking of “The Fugitive” - demonrail I know your a John Ford fan, have you seen this one? I’ve never met anyone who I could talk to about it.

PCU, because fuck yeah.

I've only seen it once, a pretty worn out VHS copy. I remember it feeling quite slow, quite 'European'. More like My Darling Clementine than, say, Stagecoach. I don't remember much besides that, though.

Recently watched ...



Beautiful Darling

Great, sad but ultimately inspiring documentary on Warhol's greatest superstar Candy Darling. An amazing human being.

funny thing, while googling for a suitable picture i found this rated very low on the interwebs, but last night i went into it with high expectations (i think from this thread?) and actually liked it.



a bit preposterous, sure, but that’s a given with most horror movies, no? so, this one worked well for me. i might even rewatch it ha ha ha. srsly.

Yeah, I enjoyed that too. Not a classic by any means but I liked its low key style.

You’re pretty spot on. He made it right after Clementine (which is his masterpiece if you ask me). He was great with Wayne, of cours, but to me Fonda always was the best Ford actor. The Fugitive is interesting to me because it’s one of the few films he didn’t try to hide being “artsy” and I believe he had more control over it than other films. It’s not perfect by any means but there’s something about it that I find really special.







Besides that recently watched a few great ones.

Dog Day Afternoon. Amazing film. Not taking away anything from Pacino and Sarandon (because of course they’re phenomenal and heartbreaking and funny) but Cazale always steals the show for me. Sal is a sad mystery who wasn’t made for this world. Even his funny lines go down bittersweet for me.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It’s a shame there’s not a perfect cut of this film. Peckinpah had something special for a while. Never shied away from the violence of the world. Backing his characters into corners and watching how they cope with their morals and ideals. Excellent stuff.

They Live By Night. I couldn’t help watching this as the prototype for something like Badlands which kind of hindered it on its own. I LOVE Nicholas Ray though and this is up there with his best. I love how he makes genre films but bends them so off kilter. This is a crime film but tender. A love story but dirty. Unique characters too. Like Sal in Dog Day Afternoon, people who just can’t fit into the world.

Full agreement from me about Clementine being his masterpiece and Fonda his greatest actor. Fonda had that complexity: that mix of old-world chivalry with a more contemporary hardness.As for Clementine, just a thing of beauty from beginning to end


More agreement. I think Cazale is now recognised as the great lost actor of that generation. All the big names knew about him and recognised his talent.

The obvious thing is to imagine some glittering career waiting for him but I suspect his sheer eccentricity would've always kept him at the cult level. But he could act alongside guys like DeNiro, Pacino and you'd still find yourself watching him rather than them. A true one-off.

I've read that Meryl Streep, his girlfriend till he died, took some pretty major career defining roles, just to pay his medical bills.

Yeah I ageee - I couldn’t see Cazale being a star with the iconic roles. He was always the great supporting actor but added so much weight. I still can’t help but fantasize a situation where he had he lead. Like Stanton and Paris, Texas. Would’ve been a site to see.

And about Streep - there’s also that story about Dustin Hoffman whispering Cazale’s name after he died to her to try and milk a good performance. Kramer vs Kramer I think. First off she didn’t need it and second fuck him. He couldn’t touch Cazale.

It's hard to see where Cazale would've fitted in the action obsessed 80s but I imagine he would've becoming a darling of the 90s indie sector.

I didn't know that story about Hoffman. He's always struck me as a bit of a cunt though.

he could have been molly ringwald’s loser dad too xD

but no, look, danny devito became a star already in the 80s. i mean the whole new hollywood business was built on people who didn’t look that glamorous. joe pesci owning goodfellas.

but yeah i could imagine him in the 90s working with jim jarmusch or van zant or someone like that.

—

anyway i watched a movie that i’d rather not name in view of the dom’s recent events but it invoved a cat named “church” which probably everyone already knew but not me. first time i saw it! involuntarily campy perhaps, but i liked it, and the ramones soundtrack made me laugh.

started also watching the stoning of soraya m. which is a proper tragedy and you know it from the title— watched only the first hour. why this happened is this: it was obvious from the start what would happen. so then i watched the plot inexorably unfold. soraya is abused, exploited, frame, then she gets hit the mob the first time. i stopped right there. then i read that the actual stoning would take 20 minutes of film time, and with another hour to go, i decided to not continue. i’m already a misanthropist, i don’t need any more excuses to hate humanity. people suck.

He would've found work, as all of them did, but the kind of role he excelled in (weak but strangely sympathetic) pretty much disappeared during the 80s, or else got turned into one-note lovable rogue-style comedy characters (Pesci's and Devito's forte).

weak but sympathetic was molly ringwald’s dad— 80’s classics

i think he was more than sympathetic though— he could be outright weird and would have done well in comedies

let me think (i’m 2 rum & cokes into the evening...)

e.g. he would have done so much better in scorsese’s “after hours” FOR SURE

after hours is a great movie but the reason it’s not a classic is we can’t (i can’t) remember the face of the protagonist. i do remember rosanna arquette though.

Yeah, After Hours is a good call. Like I said, though, he would've found work. For the most part, though, it would've been Hollywood making hamburgers out of Kobe beef.

All this talk of Cazale made me want to pick Dog Day Afternoon as my choice for film night. As it is I chose Battle Of Algiers which overlaps into what I'd been reading



I saw about 20 minutes of it at an ATP festival one year and we all could see that it was gonna be a good watch. Hwoever, you don't go to a festival to watch a film, so we turned it off and made a mental note to watch it at some point. It's only now years later have I FINALLY gotten round to watching it.

As expected it's a great film. Although, as with the Days Of Rage book I've realised that I can't imagine myself ever having that much passion for a cause or movement. And I envy people who do, even if the cause is ultimately futile.

Cruising

This caused a stink at the time for its alleged homophobia and seems to have fallen into obscurity, but whatever its politics it's a GREAT film. And while the Pacino v DeNiro debates will probably go on forever there can be no doubt that, with films like this, Pacino was far braver in his choice of roles.



Spider-Man 2

My favourite superhero movie. It's maybe seen as too lightweight by more hardcore comicbook fans but it gets everything just right for me.

Born to Win

Just when I think I've run out of sleazy 70s skid row movies to feed my addiction, another one comes my way. The real star here is the location, with lots of great footage of Times Square, but I suppose its main selling point now is a small role for a very young Robert De Niro.

I enjoyed Cruising. It reflected the mores of the time. Another good Pacino movie from the 70's is Serpico

One of the last movies I saw was Wonder Woman, which was like a B-movie dolled up in CGI and slow-mo. Completely silly.

if you're into sleazy 70's stuff, Across 110th St is great. Soundtrack is fantastic, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0s6WRaEmQM

Yeah big fan of that one. Sort of Mean Streets/blaxploitation hybrid. I wonder if Tarantino used the title song in Jackie Brown as a nod to that movie.

Two Westerns lately:

McCabe & Mrs. Miller- Fucking excellent. Great use of those Cohen songs, they never get in the way and it is never an example of the music carrying what's on screen. Only complaint is how shitty the sound was recorded but A+ film. Very poetic and I felt a lot of mixed emotions after watching. Bleak but dreamlike.

The Ox-Bow Incident - Underrated and dark. Great Henry Fonda performance and character. I love how sub plots are finished with nothing but a glance. It's about a lynching and a town's motives and evidence that goes into the lynching. A lot of characters exposed. Great great film with much depth.

i finally watched "falling down" where michael douglas goes rampage on l.a. i had seen a bit on tv back in the 90s. highly recommended!

This is definitely a great movie if I remember correctly. Haven’t seen it in YEARS, but it made quite an impression back in “the day.”

I haven't seen it in years either. I do remember a feeling at the time of wanting to like it more than I actually did, but I can see it getting a bit of a revival in the current political climate.

I've always liked Michael Douglas. Around that time he seemed to have a real instinct for films that, however mainstream, would touch on some quite controversial ideas. The kinds of films people argued about in newspaper columns and around dinner tables, not so much about whether they were good or not, but what they might be saying in a broader sense. Besides Falling Down, I'm obviously talking about stuff like Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Disclosure and Wall Street. A much more interesting figure in Hollywood than I think he gets credit for. Even before becoming a star he was producing films like One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and then later on, when he could've easily taken things easier, taking on risky films like Traffic and Behind the Candelabra. Obviously not just your average A-List mega star.

Oh yeah..so much is owed and unattributed to that movie..

one of altman’s best

yet seriously underrated and hard to find for a long time

but now it’s got the criterion treatment!

https://www.criterion.com/films/28712-mccabe-mrs-miller

Hey, did you guys know Terry Glilliam is making a “Don Quixote” movie?

I know, I know... most of his movies are like ½ Don Quixote, but this one’s going to actually be based on the book.

that sounds like fun. didn’t he try making it already years ago?

Yeah, if I remember rightly it was a complete farce. Sets getting washed away by flooding and I think the investors pulled out literally the day before they were due to start.

I know this has been his baby for a LONG time so just hope that he has the budget needed for it and pulls it off.

riiight! like it was cursed or something.

he should just do it with puppets. CHEEP!