Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up And Scald Myself With Tea (1977, Jindrich Polák)
The premiere title of my personally-curated Obscure Movie Sundays monthly film screening programme was well-attended (five persons), the viewers anxious to view what my own invitation tantalizingly...
View ArticleNamibia: The Struggle For Liberation (2007, Charles Burnett)
My taunting of Katy for complaining about long movies (“long” > 105 minutes) bit me in the ass today. After an hour delay the movie started, and after 2.5 hours I was the first to moan about how...
View ArticleTwilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
Two of my comic/horror heroes, John Landis and Joe Dante, make a Twilight Zone movie alone with Steven “Raiders/E.T.” Spielberg and George “Mad Max” Miller. The result could’ve been a masterpiece, but...
View ArticleInglorious Basterds (2009, Quentin Tarantino)
I’m not sure that I buy Tarantino films as thrice-a-decade Big Movie Events. If guy’s gonna make his fun genre flicks, I wish he’d make them more often. The movies he is emulating didn’t take this long...
View ArticlePuppet Master Trilogy (1989-1991)
Puppetmaster “Full Moon Productions presents…” According to IMDB, this was Full Moon’s first feature. They’d go on to make some of my favorite direct-to-video absurd low-budget semi-horror movies of...
View ArticleMonth of 121 Shorts: The 80′s and 90′s
Musco (1997, Michael Smith & Joshua White) A fake 1984 infomercial for a music-oriented lighting equipment company. I don’t get it. It was part of an art installation, and I don’t get those in...
View ArticleA Night in Casablanca (1946, Archie Mayo)
Weirdly slow, clunky and unfunny Marx brothers movie. It kinda stars Harpo, or at least he’s onscreen more than the others. No Zeppo at all. I’d think that would be a good thing, but he’s replaced by...
View ArticleTo Be or Not to Be (1942, Ernst Lubitsch)
I guess this movie gets lots of credit for being a Hollywood anti-nazi resistance comedy released soon after U.S. entry into the war. Not a lot of funny Hitler movies going around back then, and...
View ArticleRome, Open City (1945, Roberto Rossellini)
I get conflicting messages on Rossellini: either he can do no wrong or he did only wrong, either his early stuff was groundbreaking then he dried up or he did his best work late in his career, either...
View ArticleContraband (1940, Michael Powell)
I’ve seen a lot of wartime films by the Powell/Pressburger crew, but this one was the most fun. Neutral ship captain Conrad Veidt (Casablanca and Thief of Bagdad baddie) and his passengers and crew are...
View ArticleNatan (2013, Paul Duane & David Cairns)
Not as relentlessly Decasian as the trailer suggests, actually settles down into a normal storytelling groove of interview material for a good while, but punctuated by Natan’s papier-mache-headed...
View ArticleThe Keep (1983, Michael Mann)
A movie about nazis being killed off by aliens should’ve been more entertaining – besides a really fantastic smoke-monster effect, this was only pretty good. It tries to be very serious and sets up...
View ArticleThe Dance of Reality (2013, Alejandro Jodorowsky)
You expect a new Jodorowsky movie to be bonkers, and I was skeptical because movies this bonkers are usually wannabe-cult empty-headed nonsense. Text descriptions of a boy with a huge-breasted mom...
View ArticleLa Mémoire Courte (1982, Eduardo de Gregorio)
U.N. translator Nathalie Baye (Détective, La chambre verte, DiCaprio’s mom in Catch Me If You Can) is hired for a job involving the nazi-investigation papers of a man played by Jacques Rivette in...
View ArticleRocks In My Pockets (2014, Signe Baumane)
A good night, with the energetic director in attendance, introducing then discussing her film. It’s an impressive feat too, an animated feature made by a very small team, 2D animation composited onto...
View ArticleCabaret (1972, Bob Fosse)
Oscar for best actress, obviously, and also seven more (director, cinematography, supporting for Joel Grey) but picture went to The Godfather. I don’t know Liza Minnelli from much – just this and...
View ArticleThe Last Ten Minutes vol. 15
The Cobbler (2014, Tom McCarthy) Just morbidly curious about The Station Agent director’s latest. Did anyone realize while making this that shoe “soles” and human “souls” are homophones? Wonder if that...
View ArticleGilda (1946, Charles Vidor)
“I would destroy myself to take you down with me” Glenn Ford (this is the anonymous-looking 1940’s Glenn Ford, not the superior 1950’s version from the Fritz Lang movies) is a grifter turned...
View ArticleShoah (1985, Claude Lanzmann)
Don’t know how Lanzmann did these interviews with such an even temper and tone. Must have taken a great deal of restraint in the town where locals joyfully admitted making throat-slitting gestures at...
View ArticleExperimenter (2015, Michael Almereyda)
First half hour covers Stanley Milgram’s (Peter Sarsgaard of Night Moves, Black Mass) obedience experiments, which I knew a fair bit about, but in school we covered their problematic ethics, not their...
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