Also whoever came up with these guys for the score should get a couple of BAFTAs and Oscars and five bags of popcorn. Disjunctive and jaunty in all the right ways. Their remix of Wagner over the causeway chase obviously owes a debt to the Herzog Nosferatu but I liked it even better in this.
I watched Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II earlier; itâs pretty much just a Canadian Nightmare on Elm Street knock-off without Freddy Krueger. The most notable thing about the movie is that Sailor Moonâs voice actor is in it and she sounds exactly like she does in Sailor Moon. Michael Ironside is in it, too, not playing a villain or a hard-ass. Itâs such a Nightmare on Elm Street knock-off that towards the end it pulls a Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and the villain (who was also burnt) climbs out of somebodyâs body. I found it kind of boring and mostly just paid attention to the scenes with Sailor Moon; also the main characterâs boyfriend is the husband that dies at the beginning of Dawn of the Dead and becomes a zombie.
lalo schifrin passed a couple days ago⌠i put on âcharley varrickâ (which was great and it was a real delight to see walter matthau in another role as someone who primarily knows him as the villain-protagonist of elaine mayâs âa new leafâ) and had no idea he composed the soundtrack beforehand so when the music started playing i was like whoa fuck yes this is awesome and then his name came on in the opening credits⌠RIP
also charley varrick features what is assuredly one of the most insane vehicle stunt sequences ive ever witnessed in cinema youâll know it when you see it
charley varrick owns, cannot recommend you follow it up with FRAMED and THE OUTFIT enough for more classic joe don baker action. Framed also has an amazing stunt that youâll know when you see it
Callan
a spin-off of a late 60s TV series, adaption of the original story that became the pilot/TV play. Callan is a government assassin, put out to pasture as a bookkeeper after being deemed no longer effective as a result of developing too much of a conscience. heâs reactivated and brought in from the cold to kill Schneider, a businessman in the office next door, ex-Wehrmacht, gun smuggler. they bond over their shared love of miniature wargaming(!) and Callan arranges the hit to fit in with a Sunday gaming session round Schneiderâs
this was actually adapted from the novelisation of the original story, it suffers slightly from being too cerebral & hitting the plot points: Callan ditches a tail in the beginning, which is a complete waste of time to show the quality of his spycraft. but itâs fun & well-written. by the end you see Schneider and Callan as comrades & Callanâs co-workers in The Section as idiot ruthless toffs. directed by Don Sharp (Psychomania) very competently. watch this if you think episodes of The Sandbaggers have too much time spent on dialogue and not enough smashing glasshouses and sinking pints in pubs
the only actor I recognised was the general from Star Wars who warns about the danger posed by the Rebel Alliance to the Death Star. heâs Schneiderâs driver in 3 scenes
Iâm on a huge Radu Jude kick at the moment, I loved both Bad Luck Banging and Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World when they came out, and I just watched I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, also fantastic
one of the only filmmakers who feels consistently of the moment and entertaining
hell yeah, i saw this in the theater a few years back. utterly damning
Iâm still watching El Santo movies every now and then as I learn Spanish. Most of the popular Santos on letterboxd are the ones that have had a somewhat easy to get physical release in the US, so thereâs this strain between discerning what of these schlocky movies is actually entertaining and what just has a MST3K appeal to it. Santo el enmascarado de plata y Blue Demon contra los monstruos probably has that shallow MST3K appeal more than anything. Itâs an especially sleepy Santo flick. But it has some great, stupid images and silly free-for-all fights with knock-off Universal monsters and real luchadores.
After this we watched City Lights which is adorable and funny. An interesting pairing.
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (2024)
*****
immediately goes into my personal list of best films of the 21st century
um. itâs a slow burn movie about the incredibly luminous (to use this word) joys and pains of three women from different strata of the working class who are coworkers at a mumbai hospital. there is love, there is sex, there is aching and loneliness, there is betrayal, there is vain hope, there is even some class war
it is a movie of closeups and quiets, of dialogue, but it still has that quality of aristeia which gives everything this shining, microcosmic quality. centuries of societal oppression summed up in a womanâs facial expression on a bus ride. regime-defying rebellion summed up in the way a woman grasps her loverâs hair. itâs this sort of a thing. never preachy or didactic, the politics are a quiet companion, but i couldnât help but be overcome at times by the stakes of the thing being represented.
indian film board or whatever absolutely fumbled the oscars bag with this one, on purpose. those fucking bastards. this could have won or (me not having seen anora) at least been nominated for best picture if it got in front of enough eyeballs.
Re: the spoilered text. I think it absolutely was payoff.
Fun Graphic from Max Readâs 2021 article and its corresponding Letterboxd list
Today I went to the drive-in theater and saw two movies that were way better than I thought theyâd be:
28 Years Later - Going in, I was like, âI never need to see another Alex Garland movie in my life.â Leaving, I was like âAlex Garland is still a hack but that movie rocked.â Like I mean the kidâs dying mom carrying a newborn baby around a field of giant piles of skulls was hack hack haaack screenwriting, but otherwise the premise was fun, mostly interesting characters, great photography, cool zombies (even if they were videogamey to a silly degree, with like different enemy types including an âalphaâ one that a character actually says, paraphrasing, âAlphas take 6 hits to kill!â).
Final Destination: Bloodlines - I always found these movies punched above their weight in terms of their ability to disturb purely on the strength of the concept (dying from an accident is WAY scarier than dying from a monster or serial killer or whatever). This movie was existentially upsetting in that same way, but it was also funny as hell. Real sick exploitation style humor at points, including a perfectly abrupt ending. More extreme gore effects than I expected too. Unrealistic but NASTY. Just a great flavor-blasted horror comedy.
I think it helped that he didnât actually direct it. A lot of the dumb details kind of go down easier since Boyle tries his best to sell it. Heâs kind of a hack in his own way, but we love him for it.
damn what a combo for a drive in. wish i could catch stuff like this at mine, but they just play stuff like Smurfs and Superman all year.
They do that kinda thing at my place too, but luckily thatâs only half the screenings, and the other half are popular new horror movies. Occasionally they do a double feature thatâs like The Secret Life of Pets and The Black Phone, lol.
I went to a screening of Barry Lyndon that I guess I was just assuming was the new 4k restoration that they showed at Cannes, had skimmed past some headlines about its theatrical release this July, but it turns out I was wrong and the digital resto is not getting a theatrical release here in the US at all for whatever reason? and doesnât start showing anywhere until later this month? and the showing I went to turned out to be a 35mm screening.
Hard to complain about driving 3 minutes down the road to the Mies van der Rohe designed museum to watch Barry Lyndon on film for $7, but I only realized when the lady giving a speech before the movie was all âand no digital version could capture the splendor of our print on thirty five milimeter filmâ lights dim to a jumpy, fully scratched up faded color shifted print, in the end still very fun to see.
Finally âgot around toâ seeing Blue Velvet (I know, I know) Iâm going to need to lie down or something after that oh my god.
I finished part 2 of Tokyo!, Merde. A very sharp insight that inside the heart of post-war Japanese but too much stereotype.
I think what struck me most about Blue Velvet was Frank saying âYouâre just like meâ and Laura Dernâs anguished face.
Jeffery really wants to be a detective huh. So much of the time I was like âJeff what the fuck are you doing?!â. This feels like a Twin Peaks origin story, but I am sure Iâm not the only person to say that.
As a person with truama Iâve always felt like âperfectâ things had some crawling evil underneath that was waiting to explode, and I had to kind of heal from that to realize that isnât the case all the time, but Blue Velvet feels reflective of that mindset I had.
The deleted scenes are really worth tracking down, they tilt the movie a little bit and it makes it even more clear that this is Twin Peaks Season Zero. They also kind of explain Jefferyâs deal better, and the scenes with the performances before the titular song are pure Lynch Weird and add to the general feeling that the adult nightlife of the town is slightly out of step with waking reality. Lynch himself never recovered all the footage to make the real directors cut, and itâs a tragedy, but whatâs there excellent. OH! And make the Bug/Pest Control metaphor more forefronted.
Jeffrey really does feel like The Kid Who would Become Cooper even moreso.
