by ·Comments Off on Variety (1983, Bette Gordon)

Christy needs a job, finds one in the box office of a porno theater alongside Luis Guzman. Inspired by her new job, she starts writing dirty stories and reciting them to people. This all scares away her uptight boyfriend Will Patton (boyfriend #1 of Janet Planet), so she lets stalker-customer Louie take her out to a Yankees/Red Sox game. When he leaves abruptly she goes detective mode and follows him to a shady under-bridge deal. After a few days of this she tells Louie she’s been following him and to meet her on a corner. This seems like a dangerous move, but the movie ends with a street shot (the corner?) over some nice John Lurie music, so maybe it worked out. Some lovely scenes of a fish market at night, though I wish they wouldn’t pick up the fishes by their eyeballs, and the meditation handshake montage is great. Written by sometime-Mekon Kathy Acker.

by ·Comments Off on À Flor do Mar (1986, João César Monteiro)

“Life is made of mistakes.” A family has a big few days harboring a fugitive. I think people are calling it Ruizian because of the pirates, but it’s truly very euro-arthouse, and I dig it. Rivettian in a few ways: long takes, long movie, creaky furniture and a cat following its own direction. I knew nothing about Monteiro a couple months ago, and now I’ve seen Silvestre and all his movies have been newly-restored on blu-ray, and why not watch them all?

Laura (the prolific Laura Morante of The Son’s Room and Coeurs) had moved her kids to Italy after her husband died suddenly last summer, is back on the Portuguese coast to visit her sisters-in-law (older Oliveira regular Manuela de Freitas, younger Teresa Villaverde, better known as a director) when an American washes up on the beach, so she takes him home to hide out. He successfully lays low during searches from police and pirates, then leaves them alone. “We’ll have to learn how to use up the remaining unhappiness.”

I don’t know whether the guy was named after Conan the Barbarian writer Robert Jordan on purpose, or if Laura’s last name being Rossellini is meaningful, but Sara recites from Doomed Love (she appeared in the film eight years earlier), and their cat is named Silvestre.

The lead actors staring at Monteiro:

by ·Comments Off on City of Women (1980, Federico Fellini)

Mastroianni plays our director’s stand-in again. Following a hot woman off a train in the middle of nowhere, he stumbles into a hidden hotel hosting a theatrical feminist convention. The women drive him into the night in a crazed caravan until he’s rescued by a dude with plenty of weapons and dogs… sees a telekinetic performance… descends a giant slide while reminiscing about various hot chicks… then the women put him on trial for sexism, ho hum.

No part of this is realistic, all dream-logic. Does it play circus music whenever things get zany? Sure as hell it does. We love Marcello, and Fellini is good at filming beautiful people and things, but it’s a Petrov’s Flu situation.

by ·Comments Off on Homework (1989, Abbas Kiarostami)

Honestly a documentary about homework, interviewing kids about their homework in order to make points about schooling and parenting. AK discusses not knowing what kind of movie he’s making at the beginning (“it’s not really a film, more a piece of research”), and at the end he breaks up the format to engage more deeply with a boy who didn’t want to be interviewed.

Two kids’ ambitions:

During the interviews (the central bulk of the movie) he cuts to the cameraman really frequently, presumably for sound edits. My main takeaway was the kids answering yes/no questions with a clicking sound, which I like even more than the “mmm!”-with-head-nod I picked up from anime.

by ·Comments Off on Ariel (1988, Aki Kaurismäki)

After the mine closes down, Turo hits the road in his convertible looking for a new life, finds a girl and then trouble. He and his cellmate Matti (Boheme, Tatiana) break out and find new trouble. Matti doesn’t survive but Turo and Susanna get hitched and escape onto the title ship to Mexico.

New AK motto just dropped:

by ·Comments Off on The Big Heat (1988, Johnnie To & Andrew Kam)

The earliest To movie I’ve seen by five years, but something seems fishy… is this actually a Tsui Hark movie? Good Cop John is a crack shot but has spinal issues and his hands lock up… Clumsy Lun is incompetent… and Kam has moves. Guy who kills a bunch of people in a hospital meets his doom in an elevator shaft. This was written by Gordon Chan, who’d one-up his gunfight-in-a-hospital scenario in Hard-Boiled. The hand injury plot doesn’t work but it’s a brutal little movie.

Up top is Malaysian Ong and Kam (Hard Boiled‘s Mad Dog), below left is our hero (Waise Lee, Running Out of Time) and his girl Maggie (Betty Mak of the Iron Butterfly trilogy) who will be shot in the head in the next scene after discovering a cocaine conspiracy:

Clumsy Lun scribbling on his girl Joey “White Snake” Wong, two scenes before Lun is rigged with a grenade vest and blown to bits:

by ·Comments Off on Parking (1985, Jacques Demy)

Eighties Orpheus (Mad Love star Francis Huster) never removes his rock star headband, even at his wife’s funeral when she ODs after seeing him kissing his dude Calais (Laurent Malet of Querelle and some quality Ruiz films). Good stunt casting of OG Orpheus Jean Marais as Hades in a Schindler-colored afterlife, and Celine & Julie‘s Marie-France Pisier as his co-conspirator. Whenever the guy sings I suffer through it, then when Legrand plays the same tune over the next scene I decide it’s rather nice.

First death of Orpheus:

O and wife:

O in the underworld:

by ·Comments Off on Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989, Kazuki Omori)

A very silly movie, rarely ever good, with big sweeping symphonic music that sometimes gets close to ripping off Star Wars. Jeers to Criterion for getting people to take a 1980s Godzilla movie seriously enough that I was tricked into wasting an evening on it.

Army weapon temporarily turns Godz into a Trapper Keeper graphic:

Competing English-speaking forces kill each other to capture Godzilla DNA, then a plant lab gets blown up, then a psychic girl speaks to plants. Botanist creates a plant monster and the next time hitmen come to steal secrets they get Little-Shopped. Plant monster and Godzilla fight.

What? Your IVYSAUR evolved into BIOLLANTE

Some of the human players: Yoshiko Tanaka (right) starred in Imamura’s Black Rain the same year, the plant scientist had starred in Samurai Spy in the 60s, the psychic girl became a Godzilla regular.

Godzilla will return, and return, and return

by ·Comments Off on Top Secret (1984, Zucker & Abrahams)

Extremely cold war comedy with Val Kilmer (RIP) as a sort of Beach Boy Elvis who meets a girl and gets caught up in her family spy plot. The ZAZ group’s followup to Police Squad, pretty decent.

Omar Sharif: