by ·Comments Off on Shanghai Blues (1984, Tsui Hark)

Tuba guy (Kenny Bee of some early Hou movies) barely meets short-haired Shu (Sylvia Chang of some early Edward Yang movies) under a bridge when the war started, now trying to meet her at war’s end as planned. They each get pickpocketed and rip off pedicab drivers, identities and intentions are mistaken, it works out.

An atrociously dubbed comedy. After buying the Once Upon a Time box set and watching some twenty Tsui Hark movies, it cracks me up that this is the one that’s universally loved by the letterboxders I follow. Them: “just pure joy and beauty at every turn” … “A work of pure balletic grace, and a reminder that Hong Kong’s romcoms are every bit as ahead of the pack as their action movies.” Only Dave Kehr makes sense: “Hark’s colors have the almost startling intensity of old Technicolor; combined with his stroboscopic cutting, they make the film seem to fizz and sparkle on the screen.”

Pure joy and beauty?

by ·Comments Off on Paul (2025, Denis Côté)

Told K this isn’t a doc when she asked, but it turns out all of Paul’s social media stuff is real, oops. Paul’s in his oversharing era with public video diaries and Q&As with followers. The #1 thing I like about the movie is the record-crackle sound on certain edits.

by ·Comments Off on Histoire d’Adèle H. (1975, Francois Truffaut)

Obviously watched this in tribute to my own Adele H., but the two Adeles wouldn’t seem to have much in common.

Isabelle Adjani travels to Halifax from France during the American Civil War to stalk her ex Lt. Pinson (Withnail & I director Bruce Robinson), telling everyone different stories about who he is, lost in love with a loser gambler who doesn’t respect her at all. She takes to trying to ruin his life, bribery, hypnotism, hiding her belatedly-revealed identity as the daughter of Victor Hugo or using it as suits her needs, until she ends up getting rescued from her doomed quest and gets locked in an asylum for the next sixty years.

Reminded me of the Sternberg/Dietrich Morocco – before indie rock was invented people didn’t know how to process these feelings. Adjani is gorgeous, of course, and the movie often looks nice, but it doesn’t make a strong case for itself with the monotonous story and inelegant editing.

Dreaming of drowning:

Isabelle gone Barbados:

by ·Comments Off on Poison (1991, Todd Haynes)

Seven year-old Richie Beacon shot his dad then flew off the balcony, filmed in color news-reportage style, the picture stretched out horizontally.

Nancy Olson interrupts Dr. Graves, who then ingests pure, distilled sex-drive potion and becomes the leper sex killer, in 1950s b/w.

A thief goes to jail for the umpteenth time, meets old acquaintance Bolton. “I still could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.”

Rosenbaum:

The most exciting moments in Poison are those that create a momentary confusion about which of Haynes’s three stories one happens to be watching — moments of vertigo during which two or more of the three stories seem to fuse (or, perhaps more to the point, “bleed” together).

by ·Comments Off on L’Humanité (1999, Bruno Dumont)

Slow cinema starring a vacant-eyed cop reacting to news of a raped/murdered little girl, whose body we get a nice long leering stare at. The cop just wants to hang out with his neighbor Domino, but she’s dating bus driver Joseph, whose route goes right past the murder site. After some investigation, he finds Joseph arrested in boss’s office, tearily confessing, then our cop goes home and has a long hug and cry with Domino, then cut to the cop in handcuffs. Think I liked this best of Dumont’s pre-Quinquin slow art films, though somehow I missed “a brief shot that shows Pharaon levitating in his garden.”

by ·Comments Off on Drowning By Numbers (1988, Peter Greenaway)

Joan, Juliet, and Joely (whom Greenaway probably stunt-cast based on their first names) each drown their husbands, and also the conspirator-turned-blackmailer coroner Captain Smith, while the captain’s doomed son helps the movie count to 100. Watched on the fourth of july (movie had fireworks).

by ·Comments Off on Uncle Kent (2011, Joe Swanberg)

Okay, there was a blu-ray sale and I’ve been itching to revisit Todd Rohal so I bought Uncle Kent 2, and I know I probably do not need to watch Uncle Kent first, and I’m currently feeling end-of-world vibes from the news and am certainly not watching bad/average/filler movies on purpose, but I convinced myself that Uncle Kent 1 could be better than average, it could be a real good time, a valuable way to spend a tuesday night – and I was right.

Kent hand-draws cartoons at home, gets high, uses dating sites. Kate comes over to stay for a few days but claims to have a boyfriend, and sleeps in another room – then they meet Josephine (Decker!) on craigslist and all make out together on the couch. The most dramatic thing that happens is when Kent messes up trying to copy a nude photo from Kate’s phone and destructively covers his tracks.