Jake Gittes

Triplets of Belleville is 2003 bud. Does Helm's Deep really qualify as a scene? It's a whole act, unless you mean some specific shorter uninterrupted portion.

I bet Tele was all like

Reminder to all who haven't seen it that Hamaguchi had another even better film released last year.

Basically getting flushed down the toilet into a 21st century mashup of all the most depressing periods of the Soviet Union simultaneously

I'm here.

this Luca reign of terror needs to be stopped.

Shea Whigham didn't get his nose broken for nothing

Impressive how two people got in here despite directing the most overlooked movies of the year.

Rex and Driver. Finally some good fucking food

Some drive-by FYCs Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress (multiple choices), Ensemble, Original Screenplay, International Feature Best Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actress, Ensemble, Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, Voice performance Best Picture, Director, Actor, Cinematography, International Feature Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress x2, Ensemble, Original Screenplay, Editing Best Director, Actress, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography Best Actress (both would be at the top of my own ballot, FWIW, and beyond that the films are pretty good too) Best Supporting Actress

No Time to Die ought to have prepared you for this

What I got right now that's unlikely to change, at least in the coming weeks

I'd just turned 13 and it was one of the first ones I managed to get into by myself. Was very likely my first Scorsese. Pretty wild experience needless to say.

This is really the main underlying issue with the film and the biggest reason the novel is hard to adapt properly, I feel. The characters' extreme internal self-awareness and self-control is an essential part of the narrative yet one that's hard if not impossible to translate onscreen properly, the "mental voiceover" in the 1984 film is not ideal but at least it was an attempt. Villeneuve just ditches it, and leaving only the surface action and imposing a heavy and portentous tone on every scene (the only way he knows how to make movies) doesn't adequately compensate once we're left with just Paul and Jessica in the desert. The novel transitions quite smoothly due to making everything part of a single internal journey whereas the movie anticlimactically goes from an eventful ensemble epic to Chalamet brooding and looking at his feet in some drab caves while grave-looking people whisper about whether or not he is The Chosen One. All that's not to say I disliked this. I dug the immensity of it all, Skarsgard's horror-inflected scenes (Villeneuve should really be making horror or horror-adjacent movies), Zimmer's score before it grew repetitive and started incorporating generic "exotic" wailing straight out of a post-9/11 Middle East-set Hollywood movie. Everyone in the cast is at home in their roles, even if there isn't any performance as memorable as those of, say, Dean Stockwell or Everett McGill in the '84 film. (For all the time gained by splitting the book, Yueh is one character who really gets short shrift in this.) It kept my attention, if only because Hollywood movies with this level of scale and technical craft really shouldn't be such a rarity, but as soon as I walked out of the theater I realized it wasn't gonna stay with me.

....but really, it's about two hot gypsy women wrestling in the mud.

Watched The Spy Who Loved Me too yesterday. Not so bad. Something almost relaxing about it once you accept that it's a semi-remake of You Only Live Twice paced with all the excitement of a middle-aged man's vacation. For some reason I'd expected Moore to be leaning into the silliness so it was nice to see him dryly underplaying much of it instead. Barbara Bach is hot. Between her, Isabella Scorupco and Daniela Bianchi I appreciate the series' casting of Soviet/Russian women even if none of them were the real thing.

I watched all the '60s ones save for Thunderball (which I chose to skip) for the first time this week. (Had never seen a pre-'95 Bond before.) Wasn't totally into any of them from start to finish - Casino Royale is likely to remain my favorite - but You Only Live Twice was the most enjoyable on account of it's got the best ratio of action to wheel-spinning. From Russia with Love and OHMSS have higher highs though, the former in the train section, the latter in the photography - that's one beautiful-looking movie - and most of the second half (from when Bond first escapes the institute until the very end). Wish they'd spent more time being that engaging. Dr. No is pleasantly low-key (until the island at least) and I like Connery the best in it, Goldfinger didn't do much for me esp. considering its reputation but its iconic moments do deliver.

Who said they'd be attacked? Again, it would mean they haven't seen a lot of movies beyond the popular mainstream stuff from the past 50 years. And being familiar with a lot of movies is kind of important if you want to list the greatest 10 *of all time*.

RIP. Just got to rewatch Breathless on the big screen a month ago. Icon. I should also definitely watch more of his action movies.

If you made a top 10 greatest films of all time list where half of them were by the same director it'd just mean you haven't seen shit.

August Westerns Rio Bravo - 8/10. Too much of a self-aware Ultimate Howard Hawks Movie (must work like gangbusters if it's your first one, though), exasperatingly so in the romance that's blatantly recycled from Only Angels Have Wings (down to some verbatim-quoted dialogue) except here the woman is an impossible character desperately throwing herself at a twice-older John Wayne. The professionalism and camaraderie are purely Hawksian but less effective when they're not being counterbalanced by anything; Wings - an all-time top 10 movie for me - made them deeply affecting by having them serve as the characters' shield against the constant threat of death, but there's no real sense of danger here. That said, the Hawks formula is fundamentally potent enough that even a superficial expression of it is often grandly entertaining. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - 5/10. Clear impression of a story that was worked out from the themes backwards, leading to crude cardboard characters and a narrative that's at once simplistic and contrived. The "print the legend" moment would have some teeth if the film hadn't just spent two hours presenting us with a "truth" that's hardly any more complex or less sentimental than any myth. Don't get me started on the spectacle of 53-year-old Jimmy Stewart valiantly trying to portray someone half his age. El Dorado - 9/10. A cleaner, livelier, 100% Angie Dickinson-free version of Rio Bravo, albeit with 10 more seconds of out-of-nowhere comic-relief racism. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid - 8/10 *Unforgiven - 8/10. I'd be on the masterpiece train if this weren't so aggressive about underlining its themes, specifically if it didn't push the Schofield Kid into such over-the-top obnoxiousness and have Clint intone that he's "not that person anymore" seemingly every 10 minutes without even necessarily being prompted. There are times when it feels like the movie is writing a thesis on itself even as it unfolds. Lots of self-evident greatness otherwise. Tombstone - 6/10. Very enjoyable first half with virtually no evidence of production troubles. Then a third act that goes on for over an hour. *The Proposition - 5/10, down from what would have been 9/10 in 2012 when I had last seen it. What once seemed revelatory and deep now seems shallow and punishing, an exhausting combination of florid dialogue, One. Perfect. Shot. cinematography and only-in-the-movies stuff like Danny Huston as a cultured psycho who can both decapitate someone without a second thought and thoughtfully admire a sunset. Sure. *The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - 9/10 Eric Rohmer marathon La Collectionneuse - 7/10 The Aviator's Wife - 9/10 A Good Marriage - 7/10 Pauline at the Beach - 8/10 The Green Ray - 8/10 4 Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle - 8/10 Boyfriends and Girlfriends - 9/10 Rendezvous in Paris - 7/10 A Summer's Tale - 8/10 Strongly suspected he would be my kind of filmmaker ever since seeing him repeatedly mentioned as an inspiration for/precursor of summery relationship movies like the Before Trilogy and Call Me by Your Name (the similarities are very much there, although unsurprisingly Rohmer's movies tend to be shiftier, less overtly romantic and straightforward than those) and was glad to have it definitively confirmed (I had also previously seen and really liked Claire's Knee and some of his shorts.) Some of the best films out there about 20- and 30-somethings navigating complex relationships while dealing with anxiety, denial and self-delusion. Casually wise, witty, light on their feet, often gorgeous to look at. Excited to explore even further. Others *Hanna - 6/10 *Breathless - 9/10 Green for Danger - 8/10. A must for every whodunit fan, Alastair Sim is as great a company as any cinematic detective. Joe Versus the Volcano - 8/10. Would be higher if not for some tonally questionable choices made in the last act. Don't know if John Patrick Shanley would have kept making stuff as singular and self-assured through the 1990s if this hadn't flopped, but it's a shame he never got a chance to provide the answer. He had great and obvious gifts as a director, back then at least. This has to be Meg Ryan's best work ever too. Annette - 7/10. I think the fundamental issue is that, for all the film's efforts to disguise it, Cotillard's character is little more than an afterthought, which leaves too much empty space where the core of the romance/marriage stuff should be, but Driver's performance, various droll Sparksian touches and most importantly the unexpected gut-punch of an ending ultimately won me over. *Shutter Island - 7/10 The Untouchables - 6/10 La Haine - 8/10 *Commando - 6/10 *Malpertuis - 6/10 *In the Mouth of Madness - 6/10 *Heat - 10/10 *Interstellar - 6/10 *Barry Lyndon - 10/10

Hateful is too high, but at least it's above the much worse western released in December 2015 👀

That has nothing to do with whether it can or will win best screenplay over another movie that no one has seen yet and whether that's going to be a good thing or not if it happens. Just seems particularly strange to already "ugh" about something so completely hypothetical. As for Campion, I got the impression people were banking on/rooting for this being her BlacKkKlansman-esque high-profile movie comeback. No big surprise if it turns out more divisive than that though.