I love that she married him in prison. girl knew what she wanted and it was helter skelter.
2 Likes
The dude is a nutjob in several senses, but Iāve got to thank him for The Brown Bunny.
2 Likes
saw blink twice with my mom tonight. it was pretty good! i am always game for confused freudian movies with antagonists pulled from r/nietzsche. i do think itās a little amusing thereās been an uptick in hollywood movies aware of the āwealth gapā but canāt stick the landing. these sorts of movies arenāt new, but i wonder how theyāll mutate as the āwealth gapā continues to widen.
my most anticipated movie of the year is nosferatu.
2 Likes
Folks, Iām on a roll with seeing only the best movies released this year. Not only did I see Madame Web and Borderlands but I took it on myself to see the hotly-anticipated reboot of The Crow.
Iāll say it right up top, this was much, much more watchable than I was expecting it to be. It zooms past being bad to just mediocre. Bill Skarsgard looks hot, Purgatory is a big abandoned commuter train station with a bunch of scaffolding and it looks cool as hell, but thereās not too much to like here.
There is far too much time establishing Shellyās backstory and showing off how much she and Eric love each other. This wouldnāt be bad if it were relegated to flashbacks, but a large chunk of the first part of the movie is focused entirely on this and it drags.
The villain also being a supernatural entity seems like a big mistake here. Some of Danny Hustonās first lines are him talking about how heās made a deal with the devil to send innocent souls to hell so that he can live forever. He also has the power to whisper stuff to people to make them kill themselves, which is why I think he shouldāve just been called āThe Suicider.ā His motivation to kill Shelly and Eric are revolving around a phone video that, even after you see it, seems vague as to how detrimental it could even be. They would be better off not showing it at all, or just having some different motivation. Or do it like it was random chance, like in the comic. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
One of the other aspects I did like was that Eric kind of sucks at being The Crow. He gets his ass kicked all the time, makes mistakes, and it feels like he has no plan for how to actually go about things. At least, until he gets the black blood transfusion and then he is suddenly the most effective killer that ever lived and goes on a hyperviolent rampage through an opera hall to get his revenge.
Now, I donāt hate gore or violence, but the sheer amount of it seems so incongruous to a story that should be more focus on grief and loss. Sure, there were a lot of action sequences in 1994ās The Crow but thereās nothing nearly as explicit as the moment when Bill Skarsgard shoves a tanto against some guys open mouth and splits his head open while everyone spurts buckets of blood everywhere. It feels like it should be in a different movie.
Having rewatched the 1994 adaptation after seeing this movie, I really appreciated Sarah and Sgt. Albrecht. We get to see how the loss of Shelly and Eric affect them: Sarah lost some of the adults that were caring for her, and Albrecht struggles even more to hold on to hope in a hopeless city. In the reboot we getā¦ a tattoo guy who is kind of confused about whatās going on. The fact that Eric is resurrected almost immediately after dying is less impactful than coming back a year later for revenge. Bill Skarsgard seems sad the whole movie, but doesnāt have nearly the range of emotions that Brandon Lee shows off in 1994. The only other character who has solid motivation is the mystical man in limbo who wants Eric to kill The Suicider to free all the innocent souls from hell. Which seems a little sillier, by comparison. Also, it doesnāt help that Bill Skarsgard is constantly choking back his accent to mixed results.
I donāt like the ending, it doesnāt make as much sense as the 1994 version. Itās also setting up a sequel that it seems will likely never come.
You can feel every executive decision bleeding through this movie. The design of Ericās tattoos and outfits seem tailor made to be emulated by whatever impressionable moody teens to wear for Halloween. It is the David Ayerās Suicide Squad designs for the Joker placed onto The Crow. Perhaps the worst part is where Shelly asks Eric if he would jump off a bridge if she did and then follows it by asking āDo you think angsty teenagers would build shrines to us?ā
Honestly though, it isnāt as bad as I would expect a reboot of The Crow to be, but it certainly isnāt great.
3 Likes
Itās that time of that year again for movies about the city that never sleeps, nor do I, hency why Iāll be going till 5AM, starting withā¦
This is actually the 4th year in which I show NYC movies for the month of September, and yet The Shogun of Harlem has yet to make an appearance, so time to fixā¦
And the āIāve NEVER heard of this beforeā selection this time (the first of two) is a movie so obscure that no trailer seems to exist (official or fan made), so all I have is this clip that I posted on Twitter (sorry)ā¦
Yes, it has taken my 4th time focusing on films that celebrate the New York experience to show perhaps the greatest example of them allā¦
And I canāt think of a better way to wrap a survey of NYC cinema than a made for TV movie produced in Canada that stars Tommy Lee Jones as a disgrunted vet that takes over Central Park (yes, itās a pretty shameless ripoff of First Blood)ā¦
The stream will again be via the alt account, starting around 8PM-ish ESTā¦
7 Likes
saw stop making sense in IMAX 4K, fuck yeah
7 Likes
Just caught this movie the Time Masters. Rene laloux animated thing with designs by Moebius. I came in expecting Angelās Egg, but with Moebius designs, and the backgrounds and spaceships etc live up to the hype. I wish it was more Angelās Egg instead of kinda trying to do a more traditional heroās journey. Solid gentlemanās six if people wanna see some weird aliens.
Also caught Strange Darling and um it opens with a title card reminding the audience it was shot on film, and it did not succeed in winning me back over to its team from there.
5 Likes
I am a sucker for films using film but donāt pander me with it!
Watched Love Lies Bleeding and it was a fun, bloody, stressful, pulpy time shot beautifully with digital cameras using vintage glass and excellent color grading work to fool me that it was 35mm.
2 Likes
Yeah I donāt understand what pointing it out like that achieves further than being annoying. 35mm rules but cmon dude.
3 Likes
yeah, saw it last night and enjoyed it ok but really hated those call backs.
1 Like
I just saw the mavis beacon documentary. I think the video game history foundation is in it?
They are blurred out but the documentarians say their office is in a video game foundation in Oakland. Frankly one major reason I disliked the movie was because I found the filmmakers were quite unfair to whatever foundation this was.
1 Like
went to see cuckoo tonight. not sure how i felt about it! itās somewhere on the goofy/stupid continuum but i canāt pinpoint where, felt like it shifted from scene to scene. and a lot of the ideas/gestures in it kind of went nowhere, and not in a fun menacing portentous way but in a likeā¦ what was the point of that kind of way.
but i think i liked it because it was goofy and weird, had some fun little bits (the bike scene was good, hunter schafer flirting with a parisian lesbian was good). iām a little cautious of advancing a Trans Reading of it if only because that reading hinges on hunterās presence in the movie and that feels a little unfairā¦ but i do think there is a Trans Reading that makes the movie more coherent. like, the surreal and confusing touches and vague body horror undertones feel like they Could Be gesturing towards a general antipathy towards a conventional family structure due to gretchen being exiled from that family structure both literally (in the plot of the movie) and figuratively (not being able to enter it in a conventional way).
basically iām reading it as being about the difficulty of maintaining a loving familial connection as a trans person. which is on my mind a lot right now, since i just took a long weekend trip with my parents.
i feel like iām not explaining this very well!
5 Likes
Saw that new Beetlejuice tonight. Great comedy horror visuals accompanied by a lot of great performances.
Story was really weak though. I wasnāt expecting much but the first one has an effective and fun narrative which was what I would have liked here. Instead this one feels like a bunch of vignettes and disconnected plot lines that wrap up suddenly and conveniently. Tons of characters that have nothing to really do with anything. They went totally maximalist instead of simple and effective which was a mistake imo.
Still, decent time. Always nice to see Winona Ryder tbh.
4 Likes
I just did a trip to New York and to be festive I made my letterboxd top 4 all New York movies:
and ofc I love Muppets Take Manhattan and After Hours.
Yup, time for even more movies that illustrate how the Big Apple can be rotten to the core; last time I kicked things off with cute & cuddly puppets, whereas this week weāve got cgi cockroachesā¦
Next is something thatās been high on my list of āI really want to show this film but all I have is a less than optimal rip of a home recording of the time it was on TVā¦ wait, thereās a new HD restoration?ā (ironically, none of the HD versions of its trailer is displaying for some odd reason)ā¦
Third up is a movie by someone who goes by James Bond III, his only film in factā¦
And finally is the token slasher flick of my series (for now, might show another next time), and I rarely agree with YouTube comments, but the top one of āThis is the best NY serial killer movie ever madeā is 1000% correntā¦
The stream will again be via the alt account, starting around 8PM-ish ESTā¦
2 Likes
A stupid/fun one
I watched Werckmeister Harmonies and a 2023 interview Criterion did with Tarr to coincide with their release. First of all itās cool he acknowledges in it that āthe brand people know as āBĆ©la Tarrā is really Ćgnes Hranitzsky, LĆ”szlĆ³ Krasznahorkai, MihĆ”ly Vig, and meāāmost directors put in a similar position would say they owe it all to the team or whatever, but then not challenge any of the remarks of an interviewer saying your music placement or the writing in your filmsāfilmmaking is collaborative!
Very oddly shot interview though, a good 70% of the time they cut to look at the interviewer as he wordlessly smiles and nods while Tarr is speaking.
I wrote this draft a few weeks ago and forgot to post it:
Inspired by saddleblastersās post I looked at a couple scenes from Alien , which with a popular movie like that Iād normally just find it on Youtube, but uploads of particular scenes are weirdly hard to find in decent quality, so I put in the Blu-ray. I bought it for $4 at Best Buy years ago and didnāt ever watch it, and consequently this time discovered a heretofore-unknown-to-me special feature which lets you watch the movie with no sound except the original scoreāboth the theatrical score as well as the original original scoreāand itās a pretty cool thing. There is un-cool-ly an overlay onscreen at all times telling you the name of the musical cue thatās playingā¦
For direct comparison I then watched the space jockey scene from Prometheus (which also required consulting the Blu-ray because there are similarly few high-quality clips on Youtubeādid Disney do a purge before releasing the new one, or what?) and while I was doing that I had on the commentary track with Scott. There is this funny bit at the end:
5 Likes
A friend did an intensive with Bela Tarr a few years back, and there are so many interesting idiosyncrasies about him. My favorite being that his edits take like a week tops because of how he shoots (26 shots), so he barely does any post at all.
He also basically tells students to not tell stories in favor of focusing on actions, and made my buddy find the story to his film off of the act of making soup.
7 Likes
Man, what a cool guy.
2 Likes
so howād you like Werckmeister and did you enjoy the Pathologic isms
2 Likes