by ·Comments Off on New York, New York (1977, Martin Scorsese)

Robert De Niro trying to pick up girls at a VJ Day party runs up on Liza Minnelli, whose first 20 lines in the movie are “no.” De Niro plays a guy with social problems, if you can believe that. It’s a talky hangout drama with some good character moments, gradually accumulating plot as their music careers develop.

The audition:

Then after an entire two-hour not-great movie, Liza’s husband is having a crisis because she’s more famous than him, and she stars in a play where her man runs off because he can’t bear being with a woman more famous than him… the movie finally, gloriously becoming the full-blown musical it had been hinting at, Liza’s glamour more interesting than De Niro’s aimless dissatisfaction. According to the wikis, the movie-within-the-movie was cut from the theatrical release version – no wonder it wasn’t commercially successful. And here I was stupidly wondering if it’s based on the real couple who wrote the titular classic song in the 1940’s/50’s, but the song was written for this movie.

Dick Miller, being the man:

by ·Comments Off on The Day Shall Come (2019, Christopher Morris)

“Lenny’s a racist, but he’s one of the good ones.” Filipe’s short letterboxd review kept coming to mind, “the overall absurdism does have its moments and Morris’s anger comes through,” especially when the movie ends with cops and feds getting cheerfully promoted for destroying the lives of cool weirdos. Lead weirdo is Moses, who runs a black militant duck farm. Agent Anna Kendrick is looking for people to set up to take credit for saving the world from terrorism I guess. The feds determine Moses’s crew is no threat, but after Moses sells fake uranium to nazi cop Jim Gaffigan (!), the higher-ups get involved and everybody below goes to jail.

Moses presides:

Danielle Brooks (Clemency the same year) gives Santa a touch-up:

Afrika nails informant Kayvan Novak (Four Lions):

by ·Comments Off on El Bruto (1952, Luis Buñuel)

The couple years between Buñuel’s two Mexican bus films were productive, and this is a good one – better than Illusions Travel by Streetcar, anyway.

El Bruto is an exploited slaughterhouse worker, mocked by coworkers despite his strength, hired by a local landlord to terrorize the organizing tenants into leaving an apartment complex so it can be redeveloped. I wasn’t intending to watch two collectivist worker films in a row, just a happy accident.

While fleeing from the law after terrorizing the locals, a tragic chicken murder occurs. Then Bruto busts in on Meche, the woman whose chicken (and father) he killed, falls for her and attempts to manufacture a happy ending, but his wife Maria interferes.

Bruto had major roles in a couple John Ford movies and a James Bond. The landlord’s girl Maria Juado had a good Hollywood run in at least three major westerns and Under The Volcano. Wife Maria was better known as a ballet dancer, and Meche was in The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy.

Bruto getting his orders from the landlord:

Bruto’s excuse for everything:

Bruto’s ex is enraged that he’s got a new girl:

Things end as they must, in a hail of gunfire:

by ·Comments Off on Let Them All Talk (2020, Steven Soderbergh)

A barely pre-covid movie set on a cruise ship, haha. Everyone gave the same description of this movie, that it’s about a writer who has to take a trip across the ocean, chooses ship travel and invites her two oldest friends, then invites her nephew to keep them occupied while the writer avoids everyone. Doesn’t sound interesting based on that, but I trusted in the actors and Soderbergh’s rep, and was rewarded with some very natural dialogue mixed with exquisite writing, and an engaging watch despite some clunky bits.

Happy to see Lucas Hedges not end up with spying lit agent Gemma Chan (soon to star in Chloe Zhao’s Eternals, which is hopefully better than The Old Guard). Happy to see Dianne Wiest for the first time in a memorable movie since Synecdoche NY. She and Candice Bergen have scores to settle, which had ultimately less payoff than the Dean Koontz stand-in getting everyone’s respect at the end. Meryl Streep’s second Soderbergh movie in a row (still haven’t checked out The Laundromat). Writer Deborah Eisenberg is a Malick associate, and Soderbergh ought to have a twisty crime drama ready to go when theaters reopen.

by ·Comments Off on Synchronic (2019, Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead)

Anthony Mackie (currently having a superhero moment on TV) and his partner Jamie Dornan (Barb & Star) are New Orleans paramedics investigating a bad drug scene in a crazy long take. Mackie has an unusual brain tumor, dreams of flooding coffins, and as they discover a wave of deaths from the titular drug which lets you “experience time as it actually is” (?), Dornan’s teen daughter takes it and vanishes. Since Mackie is dying anyway and has a suspiciously coincidental pineal gland abnormality, he sets off trying to rescue his friend’s daughter from a series of pasts. “The past fucking sucks,” he accurately reports after every few-minutes-long jump back attempts to kill him. He even World-of-Tomorrows to the ancient tundra, very exciting. Things work out for the girl, if not for Mackie. More conventional than Benson & Moorhead’s other features, but as long as they keep making time-loop thrillers, I will keep watching them.

Our dudes go to the fair:

by ·Comments Off on Bird Island (2019, Sergio Da Costa & Maya Kosa)

Sketch of a movie following a narcoleptic young man as he takes over for the retiring rat breeder at a bird sanctuary. Flute music over the rat intro gives unavoidable Rat Film flashbacks. Ordinarily I’d be all over a bird movie, but I’m torn on this one. Cutting a rat to bits with scissors isn’t great, but feeding it to an injured owl moments later compensates. Pulling shards from a swan’s wound isn’t great, even though the bird is being helped (Katy ditched at this point). Finally some escaped rats have their revenge on the injured birds (offscreen) and a little birdy has to be euthanized (onscreen). Next time let’s have more birds, less death, no humans.

by ·Comments Off on Point Blank (1967, John Boorman)

“Profit is the only principle.” Double featuring this with No No Sleep, I was tickled that the lead character is named Walker. During a robbery turned murderous, Lee Marvin’s wife and his partner turn on him and leave him for dead. Years later he’s on a singleminded revenge rampage, demanding his share of what turns out to be a relatively small amount of money from the people involved… I feel like the “I want my two dollars” kid from Better Off Dead was based on Lee Marvin.

After visiting traitorous wife Sharon Acker he beats up a car dealer who leads him to Sharon’s sister Angie Dickinson, who offers to help. He catches up with his killer an hour in (never trust a man named Mal) and the guy’s a whiny bitch who gives up his bosses immediately. Marvin drops him off a building anyway. Instead of paying him to go away, Mal’s organization boss Keenan Wynn uses Marvin’s uncautious killing spree to their advantage, letting him kill off Wynn’s enemies/partners.

Besides being a satisfying Lee Marvin action story, the movie has some of the most baller shots and editing of all time, every bit as good as I remembered. Dispatched crime bosses include Lloyd Bochner (The Dunwich Horror) then Carroll “Archie Bunker” O’Connor. Car dealer Michael Strong looked familiar, but it must’ve been from this since I barely remember Patton. Mal was John Vernon who’d later go up against Clint Eastwood a few times and presumably lose. Big Bad Wynn had recently been in Dr. Strangelove, and I haven’t seen Dickinson or Marvin in enough movies.

by ·Comments Off on No No Sleep (2015, Tsai Ming-liang)

I’d just rewatched Walker with Katy, hoping she’d want to go on a multi-part Walker journey before graduating to Stray Dogs, but nope that was quite enough for her, so I watched this recently-surfaced movie alone.

The walker is slower than ever, an even more hardcore viewing experience than the first movie.

Lovely urban digital photography.

Suddenly we are nude bathing with Miike (and Nightmare Detective) actor Masanobu Andô!

by ·Comments Off on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020, George Wolfe)

It’s singer Ma’s show, but the record producers whine about every last expense, and the new guy in the band gradually takes over the movie as he antagonizes everyone. Ma is Viola Davis, also great in Fences and Blackhat, who holds a certain amount of power as long as she expends all her energy every day holding onto it, and the new guy is Chadwick Boseman in his celebrated final role, mixing arrogant with tormented. The veterans: Michael “Brother Mouzone” Potts, Glynn “Mayor Royce” Turman, and bandleader Colman Domingo (Red Hook Summer preacher-accuser). Ma gets a stuttering relative to intro the band as a power move, while Chadwick speaks of himself in the third person – never a good sign. Sure enough, he pulls a knife on Domingo, gets fired from the band after the session, and finally stabs Turman over nothing. I don’t understand the editing – good performances, though. Opening scene is set an hour south of here, in Barnesville.

Ma:

Chadwick in happier times with hottie Taylour Paige, star of last year’s Zola:

Turman, Domingo, Potts, an hour later after Chadwick has pulled a knife:

Chadwick, boxed in: