The Flea of this movie is Jonathan Richman, who attended many VU shows and analyzed their vibrations. A terrifically assembled doc – instead of making me want to listen to the Velvet Underground at all, it made me feel like watching experimental film.
Edgar overusing “funny” stock footage, and it’s all people telling the band’s story chronologically with the music in background. Standard rock doc format, but I knew very little of their background and smiled through the whole thing – wonderful to see their visual history, all the promo stuff and album cover art outtakes.
The only good bit of analysis comes from Flea: “Something that’s always kind of confounded me in popular music is people’s inability to take humor seriously.” Ron says punk felt like an attack on what they were doing. They invented electro dance pop, and entered their current phase with 2002’s Lil Beethoven. The canceled Tati movie is covered, and the Tim Burton, but not the Guy Maddin Bergman – not even a Forbidden Room clip.
The Bresson movie with the most fashion and music and humor, even an action scene. Bresson cuts absolutely loose – it’s practically a musical by his standards. I loved it very much.
On night one, dreamer Jacques convinces Marthe not to jump off a bridge. Day 2, Jacques paints, records a primitive podcast on a tape deck, then entertains an unexpected visitor who spouts art philosophy. Marthe Backstory: she fell for her mom’s boarder shortly before he went to America, promising to meet up in a year – a year and three days ago. No major progress day three (he records some pigeons in the park). Night four she gives into Jacques love for her, says they will live together, then drops him in an instant when the old boarder walks by.
Shot by Pierre “The Man” Lhomme (Army of Shadows), played Berlin along with The Decameron. Isabelle Weingarten was in The Mother and the Whore after this, and The State of Things/The Territory, and married two major filmmakers. Why does everyone on my letterboxd hate this? At least I got Rizov and Rosenbaum on my side (J.Ro was an extra!). Adaptation of Dostoevsky’s White Nights, and now I’m contemplating watching the Visconti and the Vecchiali for a White Nights Trilogy.
A perfectly fine historical drama with some fab lighting and good faces (La Pointe Courte‘s Silvia Monfort). Coming between Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus, it lacks most of the sfx magic of those, but it’s so neglected I was half-expecting it to be lousy. I didn’t even have the correct title, knowing it as The Eagle Has Two Heads, while The Two-Headed Eagle makes more sense.
Monfort is the audience-surrogate newcomer to a castle where the widowed queen has shut herself away for ten years, and is about to hold a ball. Queen Edwige Feuillère (just off starring in a Dostoevsky adaptation) is surprised by a visitor at her window who looks exactly like King Jean Marais, and the bulk of the movie is psychological spy games between these two. She calls him “My Death” (which is very Cocteau) since he’s meant to be an assassin, the corrupt cops outside pretending to search for him. He is of course a poet, and she of course falls for him, in a dignified/suicidal way.
Police chief Jacques Varennes (La Poison) hides in a treehouse, and he and the queen run around giving everyone contradictory orders, until she gets to die with her king as she’s always dreamed (Marais taking a nice fall down the stairs).
The queen uses a room-sized model palace as a shooting gallery:
Still stuck in 2021-catchup until we get to the next Chaplin. This was a mid-1980’s ensemble movie where every one of the 20 lead characters is “the crazy one.” It’s like Vampire’s Kiss if Nicolas Cage played all the parts. For a while I was over the moon, but an hour in I hit my fill of wackiness.
After a successful bank robbery, the four thieves led by Tchéky Karo (Full Moon in Paris) meet a new friend on the train, latch onto Sophie Marceau (of a Pialat the same year), then declare war on the four Venin brothers who wronged her. Leon from the train (Francis Huster, star of Demy’s Parking the same year) takes over as the lead, falling for Karo’s girl Marceau, his eyes glowing yellow when he gets overeager. I lost track of everyone else, all of whom end up dead anyway, but a guy from Amer was in there, a guy from Malle’s The Lovers, a character named Andrzej Zulawski – and a flamethrower. Inspired by The Idiot, but certainly doesn’t follow that novel’s storyline… still, with the Bresson, I made an accidental Dostoevsky double-feature.
The best 2021 movies:
1. Mad God (Phil Tippett)
2. The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
3. Summer of Soul & The Velvet Underground & Get Back
4. The American Sector (Stephens/Velez) & Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi)
5. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
6. Monster Hunter (Paul W.S. Anderson) & Malignant (James Wan)
7. Gunda (Victor Kossakovsky) & Rock Bottom Riser (Fern Silva)
8. Siberia (Abel Ferrara) & Annette (Leos Carax)
9. Strawberry Mansion (Birney/Audley) & Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir)
10. The Killing of Two Lovers (Robert Machoian)
11. The Green Knight (David Lowery)
12. Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito)
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The best from the previous five years, watched this year:
1. Wolfwalkers (2020, Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart)
2. The Empty Man (2020, David Prior)
3. Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (2020, Werner Herzog & Clive Oppenheimer)
4. The 20th Century (2019, Matthew Rankin)
5. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016, Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone)
6. Martin Eden (2019, Pietro Marcello)
7. MS Slavic 7 (2019, Sofia Bohdanowicz)
8. Vitalina Varela (2019, Pedro Costa)
9. Let Them All Talk (2020, Steven Soderbergh)
10. Valley of the Gods (2019, Lech Majewski)
Favorite older movies watched this year:
1. Sparrow (2008, Johnny To)
2. Big Time (1988, Chris Blum)
3. Come and See (1985, Elem Klimov)
4. Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971, Robert Bresson)
5. Three Lives and Only One Death (1996, Raoul Ruiz)
6. The White Meadows (2009, Mohammad Rasoulof)
7. Exotica (1994, Atom Egoyan)
8. Johnny To’s Vengeance & Drug War & Heroic Trio & PTU & Throw Down
9. Caravaggio (1986, Derek Jarman)
10. Francisca (1981, Manoel de Oliveira)
11. Baron Prasil (1961, Karel Zeman)
12. Yakuza Apocalypse (2015, Takashi Miike)
13. 1949 duo The Set-Up (Robert Wise) & Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis)
14. Green Snake (1993, Tsui Hark)
15. A Town Called Panic (2009, Aubier & Patar)
16. SHOCKtober picks Devil’s Candy & Vampire’s Kiss & Office Killer & Detention
17. Storm Over Asia (1928, Vsevolod Pudovkin)
18. Jean Renoir le patron (1967, Jacques Rivette)
19. Barbarella (Roger Vadim) & Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie Davis)
20. El Bruto (1952, Luis Bunuel)
21. Criterions Laura & Macbeth & Fist of Fury & The Passenger & I Wanna Hold Your Hand
22. 2014 duo Buzzard (Joel Potrykus) & Blind (Eskil Vogt)
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Favorite shorts watched this year:
1. Point and Line to Plane (2020, Sofia Bohdanowicz)
2. Perfect Fifths (2020, Courtney Stephens)
3. Maat Means Land (2020, Fox Maxy)
4. a bunch by Guy Maddin and Bertrand Mandico
5. a bunch by Stan Brakhage (2) (3) and Robert Breer
6. Metaphor or Sadness Inside Out (2014, Catarina Vasconcelos)
7. Tsai Ming-liang: No No Sleep & Sand / The Night
8. Train Again (2021, Peter Tscherkassky)
9. a bunch by Borowczyk & Lenica and Harry Smith
10. Onyeka Igwe’s A So-Called Archive & The Names Have Changed
11. Cityscape (2019, Michael Snow)
12. Olla (Ariane Labed) & Nimic (Yorgos Lanthimos)
13. Liberation of the Mannique Mechanique and other Vogel shorts
14. animations Chanson de Prevert & Brothers Bearhearts & The Tale of How
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Favorite rewatches of the year
(ranked by rewatch-experience, not necessarily quality of film)
1. City of Lost Children (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
2. Videodrome & Crash (David Cronenberg)
3. 2046 (Wong Kar-Wai)
4. Hudsucker Proxy & Barton Fink (Joel & Ethan Coen)
5. The Matrix (Wachowskis)
6. Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
7. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
8. Before Sunset & Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
9. Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola) & Ravenous (Antonia Bird)
10. The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin)
And I don’t know where else to put this, but I’ve watched all the monthly movie shows by The Mads (ex-MST3K), which have been a highlight of the year.
Happy New Movie Year!
Again I kept a letterboxd list of all the must-see movies released in 2021, though I’ve removed a few because my definition of “released” keeps changing.
I did not make a list of streaming concerts and such, but enjoyed watching Clipping, Deerhoof, Mary Timony, Decemberists, Waxahatchee, Jon Langford, and everyone at Gonerfest.
Trying to prioritize watching the new releases I think I’ll like, and the older ones I keep telling myself I need to watch – and that sounds like an obvious and stupid statement, but in past years whenever I’ve chosen titles I simply must watch next, there is no way in hell I’m gonna be watching those next.
I want to see more classic experimental stuff, so I’ve started going through Amos Vogel’s book and watching the titles within, from Storm Over Asia to The Goalie’s Anxiety – still many more chapters to go. I also want to watch more recent experimental stuff and not get hung-up in the 1940’s thru 70’s forever. Been collecting lists of less-commercial works assembled by a few writers – spending more time organizing the lists than watching the films, but that led me to Fauna this year, and shorts by Lertxundi and Asili and Nishikawa.
Also got some larger must-see lists, an ever-growing pile of favorite directors, a few animated shorts collections, True/False docs, rock docs, various projects with Katy, rewatches of favorites, the Criterions, and the blu-rays I keep renting and buying (most recently World of Tomorrow). Thinking of swinging the other way than usual (seek out the most popular/acclaimed stuff I haven’t seen) and choosing the weirdest title from each list to have a Weird 2022. But I know I’ll just keep watching whatever I feel like.
I watched the endings of some movies, during the brief period of time when amazon prime was working fine on my laptop.
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The Tomorrow War (2021, Chris McKay)
The sci-fi thing that opens with Chris Pratt falling out of the sky. Two hours later, someone’s gonna have to blow this ship manually. Gunner JK Simmons is saved from dreadful-looking CG wolfoctopus beasties by a soldier with a chainsaw. Post-splosion, it’s up to Pratt, his dad Simmons and Chainsaw Guy to track and kill the mother alien. Comes down to melee weapons, a hard-won triumph, and Chainsaw Guy missed the whole battle. Lot of self-sacrifice talk, a very lame home reunion scene, Pratt having been fighting aliens from the future to protect his perfect suburban family. Wonder if Pratt’s “dad” is actually Pratt from the future? Chainsaw Guy is Sam Richardson from Werewolves Within, which I rented this SHOCKtober but didn’t get around to watching. The director’s background is Robot Chicken, and the writer did that Ethan Hawke movie in volume 23.
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The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021, Will Sharpe)
Another true story of an eccentric artist, but we’ve run out of artists to biopic, so this is a guy who painted psychedelic cats? 1925, it’s in 4:3 in Dr. Cook’s asylum, where inspector Adeel Akhtar (Four Lions) recognizes a washed-up Wain (Benedict Cumberbatch with Mark Twain hair). “I have failed,” cries Wain, then narrator Olivia Colman leads us to a much nicer asylum where Wain can see cats again, and HG Wells (NICK CAVE) gives him a shout out on the airwaves. Reportedly only the Claire Foy sections were good, and she’s gone by ’25, but we get a brief flashback to her dying. The director also made a Colman miniseries with David Thewlis this year, cowriter Simon Stephenson worked on Luca.
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The World Is Not Enough (1999, Michael Apted)
Picking up where I left off in volume 007. These things are complicated, so checking the wikis to see what they’re about before jumping into their last ten… Pierce Brosnan is supposed to protect rich girl Sophie Marceau from nuclear-armed villain Robert Carlyle, ok. Bond and the baddie and Denise Richards are on a sinking submarine! The action and acting look not so hot – did Carlyle and Brosnan have in their contract that they’re not allowed any realistic fight scenes? Exciting music plays as Bond has to hold his breath for a really long time. Bond plugs a hose into a socket which shoots a rod through a cavity, I think it’s a metaphor. Cleese and Dench, a high-tech sex joke and a Y2K reference, nice.
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Die Another Day (2002, Lee Tamahori)
Another billionaire is involved, and it’s one of those twisty triple-cross mole movies so I won’t expect to know what’s going on. Something extremely explodey is happening while Rosamund Pike is threatening Halle Berry at swordpoint on a plane and Pierce fights large-mouthed villain Toby Stephens. Halle and Pierce both make good kills with nice 90’s kissoff dialogue, but the action’s a hash and the slow-mo photography and CG flair are laughable. Why’d they cast Michael Madsen as a good guy? The smarmy dialogue seems forced as they fall from the plane in an escape helicopter. High-tech and low-tech sex jokes.
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Casino Royale (2006, Martin Campbell)
Prequel time, new Bond Daniel Craig, whose job is to bankrupt yet another rich guy so he can’t finance evil stuff, ok. Movie long as hell, so I’ll give it eleven minutes. A more grounded movie, no crashing vehicles, Bond is a guy with a pistol using ingenuity to save Eva Green from eyepatched baddies. I spoke too soon – the Venice building itself is collapsing/sinking as a stand-in for World’s submarine. Since it’s a 60’s throwback, women can’t fight – all Eva can do is commit suicide-by-elevator. Wait a second, Bond’s using a Vaio laptop and Ericsson phone in the postscript, so it’s a prequel set in the present, and sponsored by Sony? I think all the major actors were already dead, so I missed Isaach de Bankolé and Jeffrey Wright and Mads Mikkelsen. This looked much more decent than the last couple, but still not approaching Mission: Impossible quality.
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Quantum of Solace (2008, Marc Forster)
In which Bond stumbles upon another rich terrorist whilst avenging the death of Eva Green. The action’s a hash again, but that’s because Bond is fighting an axe-wielding Mathieu Amalric, and you gotta shake the camera a lot to make that look convincing. These things always feature guys outrunning explosions, and a gun dropping down some metal stairs out of reach. Bond and Olga Kurylenko escape a lot of fire and abandon Amalric in the desert, then he chases down a Quantum agent and has closing dialogue with Judi Dench in the snow, Bond not having much film-end luck with the ladies ever since the movies killed his best girl.
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The Aeronauts (2019, Tom Harper)
Out of Bond movies I can watch for free, this is the Eddie Redmayne ballooning movie. Their hot air balloon is falling from above the clouds, so they toss lots of heavy objects from a great height, probly not killing anyone below since populations were sparse in 1862, then Eddie cuts loose the basket so the balloon will act as a parachute, which drags poor Felicity Jones through a field. They are two cheesy handsome youths, and both survive for narrator Felicity to run around giggling while Eddie presents his scientific findings to an all-bearded-men conference. From the director of Wild Rose.
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Vivarium (2019, Lorcan Finnegan)
Watched the opening scene on a wiki tip that it featured baby birds, then plunge into the sci-fi dystopia. Poots attacks her neighbor with a pickaxe, but he’s a skittering insectoid from a subterranean hellhouse, and she keeps quicksanding through the floor into color-coded Charlie Kaufman realms. The alien baby-man buries Poots, I guess Eisenberg is the other bodybag in the hole. Cool looking set, anyway.