by ·Comments Off on Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987, Eric Rohmer)

Two girls meet on a country road and spend four chapter-titled episodes together, this might as well have been named Four More Moral Tales. M is a city ethnology student (Jessica Forde of The Blind Owl the same year). R is a country painter (Joëlle Miquel of Lelouch movies). M agrees to stay over another night after a passing truck ruins their experience of The Blue Hour (a moment before dawn when “you can feel nature holding its breath”, the exact opposite side of the day from The Green Ray). So far I’m on R’s side, because she thinks a lot about outside bird sounds.

2. After M stays in the country, she invites R to paint in the city. Tyrannical waiter Philippe Laudenbach (Mon oncle d’Amérique) illustrates how much Europeans hate when you try to pay the tab with large bills.

3. The most tedious episode – M sees a woman shoplifting, attempts to help her evade the police by moving her bag aside, but the criminal runs off leaving M with a bag full of pilfered groceries and an ensuing lecture about it from R, then she in turn lectures a subway scammer (Green Ray star Marie Rivière).

4. R shows off her portfolio to an art dealer (Perceval himself, later evil boss of The Empire), M pretends to be a disinterested visitor who shames the dealer into paying more for a painting.

by ·Comments Off on The Stunt Man (1980, Richard Rush)

Heck of an opening sequence. This silly meta-action movie isn’t gonna top that, I thought, then the opening sequence is followed by an entire heck of a film, to the point that I started wondering if it won oscars. Nominated, but tough luck coming out the same year as Raging Bull and Ordinary People. Director is the toughest race: Redford/Lynch/Scorsese/Polanski/Rush. I haven’t seen Tess, but Rush would feel like a strong contender. This is a good man-on-the-run drama about the making of a bad WWI movie, every shot and camera placement and stunt and Peter O’Toole line reading a bit further out than necessary.

Steve Railsback (star of Lifeforce) is on the run from the cops when he stumbles onto a movie set and maybe accidentally helps kill a stunt driver. Filmmaker Peter O’Toole hires Railsback as the new/old stuntman, claiming to the police that there was no accident, the two guys covering for each other at least until manipulative madman O’Toole gets all the dangerous long takes he needs. The actress caught between these guys is Barbara Hershey (Last Temptation of Christ, Mrs. Yeager in The Right Stuff). It all works out, more or less, Railsback admitting he became a fugitive by attacking a cop with a tub of ice cream, and O’Toole graciously not murdering him during a stunt.

by ·Comments Off on Normal (2025, Ben Wheatley)

Somehow when I wasn’t paying attention to the drug TV shows and the Russian-made genre flicks, Bob Odenkirk became an action star in his sixties. Here he’s a traveling fill-in lawman, and while halfheartedly playing sheriff for some Minnesota town a lot of shit goes down – a bank robbery brings the yakuza-payrolled townsfolk to armed warfare. “That’s not where I was aiming” – Bob’s first return shot blows apart Evil Mayor Fonz. The dead ex-sheriff’s daughter Jess McLeod teams up with him. It’s all shooting and ‘splosives until the two sides team up to con the Japanese into not murdering them all, then the ruse is exposed and it’s all shooting and ‘sploves some more. A pretty good time, more generic than Free Fire but also better.

Fukasaku Fest:

by ·Comments Off on Return to Silent Hill (2026, Christophe Gans)

Opening scene is so lousy, but the colors are bright, I remember liking the first movie (and that’s all I remember about it) and there’s promise of a Pyramid Head monster (which is also what I’ve been calling the pileated woodpeckers buzzing around the cabin), so, keeping an open mind.

Ivor Novello (Benediction) meets the lovely Mary (a horror regular, of various Saws and Purges). Flash-forward, she is dead because he’s such a bad driver (this is his defining character trait), but still sends him a letter to return to their home, which is an increasingly dodgy-digi-fx place. I think he has Trauma, and his personal Silent Hill is inside the mind – an ash-covered town, the local duplex playing Jacob’s Ladder and The Tenant. It’s one of those Shutter Island (or Jacob’s Ladder) stories where an empty man gradually figures out who he is/was.

Love at the bottom of the sea:

Some people attempted to write a normal movie review, focusing on what is actually in the movie, most of which sucks, while people with internet madness are predictably calling it a perfect film from a master stylist, or the most affecting onscreen portrait of grief ever filmed. Me, I am postponing plans to rewatch part one this SHOCKtober.

Me, going out to tape Smashing Pumpkins at the Metro:

Metro security, spotting my gear:

by ·Comments Off on Journey Into Fear (1943, Norman Foster)

My movie watching is outpacing my progress on the James Naremore book, so I don’t know the whole deal with Norman Foster and this Mercury Theater production, but it stars all my Kane and Ambersons buddies and is obviously a part of the big Welles picture. Annoyed to discover that there’s a longer reconstructed version with ten extra minutes that played MoMA a decade ago, but which never came out on video, so I watched the dull censored version, and it was still pretty great.

The Kane Boys:

An assassin is after arms dealer Joe Cotton, but this was during WWII so we’re supposed to be rooting for the arms dealer, not the assassin. Turks and Russians and nazis are involved, Cotton is sent undercover on a small ship but the assassin is also onboard (very nicely introduced via his skipping turntable). Now we get to meet all the other passengers and try to sort out their loyalties in time to save Cotton’s life.

Major Ship Captain Amberson:

Orson is apparently an ally, Major Amberson great as the ship’s captain, Agnes not great with a French accent, Dolores del Rio hot as a dancer in a catsuit. Cotton (a married man!) gets pushed around by everyone, has no plan or confidence, is overly insecure about the dancer, then when they arrive on shore he escapes a kidnapping attempt through actual quick thinking and defeats the assassin during a rainy rooftop struggle.

Remade in the 1970s with Sam Waterston, assassin Ian McShane, Shelley Winters in the Moorehead role, and some crazy additional cast (Zero Mostel, Vincent Price, Stanley Holloway).

by ·Comments Off on The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976, Clint Eastwood)

Clint was just innocently farming when some assholes come along, steal his wife, murder his kid and burn down his house. Cue a training montage! The assholes are a murderous rogue group in the union army, so Clint joins the confederates. Cue a war montage! The last of the confederates surrender when the war is over, and while pledging their loyalty to the revived union they’re all gunned down. Clint sees this, chain-guns 100 unioners, and goes on the run.

“After I get to likin’ someone they ain’t around long.” A dumb blunt movie, Clint now wandering the earth, gathering traveling companions (wide-eyed Sandra Locke, doomed kid, The Chief), tending to arrive at some conflict or another just in time to dispense cold justice. Clint’s fifth movie as director, and the earliest I’ve seen by a decade. Confed troop leader Fletcher (Killer Klowns From Outer Space) is allowed to live, Evil Unioner Terrill (Deliverance rapist typecast as a violent hillbilly) killed on his own sword.

by ·Comments Off on Paper Trail and animated shorts

Paper Trail (2026, Don Hertzfeldt)

Following the life of a guy named Steven through marks he has made on paper, all kid drawings then love letters then lease agreements then forty years of signing off on bland work documents. Subtle! Will revisit it at a later date (haha).

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Duck Pimples (1945, Jack Kinney)

Hoped from the title this would be a Daffy, but it’s a Donald – fortunately one of his more insane ones. Home alone and easily scared, he’s attacked by scary stories from inside radio and books, culminating in an imagined crime story between himself, a thug, and Jessica Rabbit.

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Joy Street (1995, Suzan Pitt)

Depressed woman kills herself… loopy balloon creature comes alive from her ashtray and dances whimsically around the house before discovering her. Then I honestly don’t know what happens, but the animation is top-notch as per Pitt’s usual, and the woman’s alive at the end as Debbie Harry sings over the closing credits.

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Fun on Mars (1971, Sally Cruikshank)

Absolute anarchic dance-party nonsense. If I’d known what this would be like, I would not have watched it right after Joy Street since it out-wackies that movie’s whimsy. This 1971 movie set to an early 1930s song would be the equivalent of someone now making a short to a song from… oh no, a mid-80s song.

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The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1943, George Pal)

Bart is cursed with a seemingly infinite supply of hats until he trades with the dickhead king. A “Madcap Model,” not a Puppetoon. I like that it’s full of light and shadow.

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Praise Be To Small Ills (1973, Tadanari Okamoto)

A rare Katy pick, this was a musical story about two men who lived with demons: one a sickly father of many children who managed to get by for forty years despite being weakened by a demon, the other a big strong manly man whose entire family was exploded by 13 demons on the night their first baby was born. We chose to ignore the life lesson you’re supposed to learn from all this (??) and focus on the music and cool paper-diorama animation.

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Gorilla My Dreams (1948, Robert McKimson)

Also not a Daffy but a bugs, who washes up on an ape island and gets adopted by a baby-crazy ape mom then gets attempted-murdered by her husband. Fortunately no cannibals here, just quick a Tarzan cameo.

by ·Comments Off on Down With Love (2003, Peyton Reed)

Revisited one of the greatest battle-of-the-sexes 1960s-flashback non-musical comedies with K and her mom. Really a two-person show, with good supporting parts for Ewan’s boss Niles (who should’ve been in more movies) and Renee’s agent Sarah Paulson (unfortunately best known as the psychologist in Glass).

by ·Comments Off on 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026, Nia DaCosta)

This one is set 28 days later than 28 Years Later. Our kid Spike has been kidnapped by the Jimmy Gang run by Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, spends most of the movie semi-panicking since his new friends have a kill-or-die policy and they like to torture local homeowners to death for no apparent reason. They plan to grow in numbers and take over the land, but their plan seems mathematically challenging, since you have to kill a Jimmy in combat to become one. Spike Jimmy does make friends with Girl Jimmy (Erin Kellyman, a ghost in The Green Knight), who finds out about Ralph Fiennes and thinks he might be Crystal’s dad Satan.

Fiennes, meanwhile, spends his days hanging out with anesthetized alpha-zombie Samson, and spends his nights dancing to Duran Duran in his bunker. He makes a deal with Crystal to put on a show and impress the others. But things start to turn sour in Jimmyland, with loyalties in doubt, then Jimmy kills the Jimmy who was gonna kill our Jimmy.

Dr. Ralph and the Jimmys destroy each other, leaving zen zombie Samson partially dezombified, and Jimmy Spike running off with Jimmy Kelly. Being an immediate sequel with no new characters, DaCosta (Candyman 3) goes through the motions of setting up part three part three, which is apparently gonna star the ur-Jimmy Cillian Murphy.