The Lacemaker sounds neat. I'm down for it.
What are people thinking for week 6 (made in Spain)? I'll likely end up playing it safe with Almodovar or Bunuel, but I'm curious where others are looking. In terms of world cinema, I lag behind when it comes to Spain.
Are we saying literally made IN Spain? Or will just a Spanish director cut it?
Just wondering because weren't some of Almodovar's films made stateside?
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I guess it depends on how strict you want to be with the rules. The wording of the challenge is "Made in Spain," so that's what I'm going with. This would mean Luis Bunuel's Viridiana would qualify, but Belle de Jour would not.
EDIT: One might say "any Spanish language film should count," except that isn't so simple as it may be for many other languages since Spanish is the primary language of so many countries. So Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone would qualify (Mexican/Spanish co-productions), but Cronos would not (Mexican production).
EDIT 2: I haven't actually checked to see if any of these movies were released by Criterion haha. So that's another thing to consider obviously.
Last edited by Idioteque Stalker; 02-06-2021 at 06:14 PM.
Victor Erice's El espÃ*ritu de la colmena is very Spanish and very great (more substantial to my mind than anything I've seen by Almodóvar, even Habla con ella). Juan Antonio Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista is also very much worth seeing.
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
Nice, thanks. I saw The Spirit of the Beehive long ago -- that may be a movie I watch again some day. Death of a Cyclist sounds promising. I'll probably choose between that, Viridiana, and Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.Quoting baby doll (view post)
Criterion’s website for discs allows you to find films in the collection by country
https://www.criterion.com/shop/brows...?country=Spain
Last edited by Mal; 02-06-2021 at 07:49 PM.
That's super helpful. Fewer options than I imagined, and I sure didn't expect an Orson Welles movie to qualify.
In the spirit of the rules of "watch in any order", I jumped ahead and got week 14 out of the way, with Charade. I love me some Hepburn and Grant, and this one was a great mix of action, comedy, and some suspense (though I pretty much predicted the conclusion pretty early on). This one may be good enough to crack my top 100 if I ever got around to rethinking about that.
I love Charade. That was a blind watch for me, and I was hooked. Skip the remake.
Week 2: Throne of Blood
I started this one last week at one point, but it was slow going and I was tired, so I only made it about 30 minutes in. Rewatched today, and after the slow first 40 some minutes, it picks up a bit, and speeds to a conclusion that was inevitable. I thought the framing was great, the story good, and the acting was pretty solid for the most part, though I found Asaji to be way over the top. Solid all around, but still prefer Ikiru and Seven Samurai of the 3 Kurosawa's I've seen.
It may be my favorite telling of Macbeth.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Week 4 - The Uninvited.
The Uninvited begins with a brother and sister buying a gorgeous seaside mansion for $1800.
Things get even scarier from there.
Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey play the starring brother sister duo in this 1944 chiller. Rumors of ghosts and other phantasmagoria float around this suspiciously affordable seaside estate. As Milland tries to romance the granddaughter of the home's previous owner, an Agatha Christie-like murder mystery takes shape.
Beautifully photographed, with some images that are quite spooky. And what I thought was a very cool primitive portrayal of ghosts on film.
Some beautiful music, too. A piece that Milland plays on the piano while woo-ing the aforementioned granddaughter very obviously borrows from Casablanca's legendary "As Time Goes By", and works well for the scene.
I'm being purposely vague about the film because the mystery is so effective and absorbing. I would love for more to see this one.
Come 10-1/2 months from now, it could very well be a contender for the best film I saw this year.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
This is what I went with for week six. Good looking out BD. The titular death occurs during the opening credits, and the tight 88-minute runtime deals expressly in the aftermath of scheming, guilt, and paranoia. Like the best film noir it is an onslaught of gorgeous b&w visuals, but director Juan Antonio Bardem (uncle of Javier Bardem) and editor Margarita Ochoa further spice up the craft with plenty of unexpected cuts; I'm not sure how it would fit into his film theory, but I imagine Sergei Eisenstein would've had a good chuckle at many of the more ironic/associative edits in this film (there's also a bravura sequence during a flamenco performance that has no dialogue but turns darting eyes, lip reading, and fidgeting hands into a key narrative moment -- the high point of suspicion in an already anxious film -- through exceptional editing). Bardem was a communist, and his disdain for the upper-class is apparent in every scene. At points it's almost a black comedy of manners, featuring beautiful people (Lucia Bose was a literal beauty queen) as they repeatedly bungle their attempts to navigate the rituals of high society while covering up their manslaughter and sordid affair. It started to lose me for a bit in the second half, once the wily art critic storyline gives way to a university subplot in which a student is far too quick to change her tune on the professor who did her wrong (and said professor develops a groan-worthy habit of staring pensively into space while saying something vague, like, "There is something I must do... something that will fix everything"). But I was won over again by how everything resolves. The ending is just killer, and solidifies Death of a Cyclist as essential noir. Four stars.
6. La boutique [Las pirañas] (1967) - Somewhat amusing relationship comedy between a silly man and his wife, manipulating back and forth to get what they want. The actors are good, story isn't anything special. 5/10?
I went with Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters for week seven. More biopics should attempt this type of free-flowing structure (the “four chapters” subtitle is a little misleading since each chapter further contains three distinct sections -- Mishima’s present, his past, and a dramatization of his work); the buckshot of conceptually-but-not-chronologically-related biographical details is a promising and surprisingly untapped method of tackling the nigh-impossible task of capturing an entire lifetime within a feature-length film (Peter Watkins’ Edvard Munch is a potential touchstone, except it was originally released as a television miniseries and pushes the limits of “feature-length” at nearly four hours). But it’s simply too all-over-the-place -- I’d rather trust connective tissue exists at an atomic level than bother myself with getting out the microscopes and particle accelerators necessary to examine it for myself. As one might expect, the Philip Glass score arpeggiates ceaselessly, as if in a desperate attempt to compensate for the film’s lack of narrative thrust. Still, Paul Schrader’s ambition, Mishima’s writing, and most notably Eiko Ishioka’s production design (seriously, the minimalist look of the dramatizations alone is enough to carve out a place in cinema history) make it easy to become dizzy with appreciation on a moment-to-moment basis. Ultimately the film comes across a bit like Mishima’s ill-received garrison address: the ideas are all there, and the commitment is unquestionable, but one walks away uncertain of exactly what was said. Three stars.
7. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) - Hey, I'm the same age as this movie. Immaculate, artful, vibrant, haunting. This is probably something I'll pick up during the next Criterion sale. This doesn't play like any ordinary Schrader film on the surface, yet the "story of a man against the world" familiarity is all there. Start-to-finish captivating while never utilizing conventions. 8/10, though I'm sure it'll improve on a second watch.
Sorry I've fallen behind maintaining this for a couple of weeks. Will catch up tomorrow
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I went with They Live by Night for week eight. Honestly I don't have much to say -- I like Nicholas Ray but, considering the reverence with which most people speak his name, I find myself deflated each time I don't fall head over heels for his movies (which, aside from In a Lonely Place, has happened consistently). Props for being among the first doomed-lovers-on-the-run movies, but if I'm being honest I tired of the "genre" long ago. There's little to complain about and little to praise outright. I would've been totally indifferent if not for Cathy O'Donnell, who early on is guarded to the point of near-silence (but can kill with a glance) before blossoming into a woman whose face alone signals a young person totally, tragically in love. Three stars.
8. Eva (1948) - It came up under romance and it has some romantic bits. However, this is also a film from a script by Ingmar Bergman, so we've got some complex human issues at hand regarding innocence, marriage, and death. Somewhat expected revelations, though I enjoyed it without much work. 6/10
For week 6, we watched The Spirit of the Beehive.
Still stewing in my mind. First observation is that it is one of the most beautiful films I've seen in some time. Every single shot is perfectly composed and framed. One particularly impressive shot of a woman arriving at a train station on her bicycle, done in one take, everything just perfectly balanced and tracked for the entirety of the shot. Beautiful.
Strange to me that the film is qualified as a "fantasy" on both IMDb and Criterion. Aside from a very brief hallucination, everything in the film was matter of fact and occurred in reality.
The film had a nice balance between being a melancholy tale of the innocence and purity of childhood (when we are watching the story from the adults' point of view), and both sad and frightening when we see how that purity and innocence can be the source of deep misunderstanding of the violence that adults are capable of.
Great movie. Will be thinking about it for a long time.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I went with The Phantom Carriage for week nine. This movie's main reason for existing is to point out the special existential torment awaiting those who wantonly cough in other people's faces. I've been saying it for the past year, but The Phantom Carriage said it a century ago! Truly ahead of its time. Also, the drowning scene is magnificent. Three stars.
I also watched The Phantom Carriage which I think is now the earliest feature that I've seen. I was stunned by how modern it was and how much technique went into it.
9. The Rink (1916) - Chaplin and rollerskates. Not very memorable.
Just to show how tired I've been lately, I 100% thought this said "The Ring".
And I was so excited thinking "wow, Charlie Chaplin did a version of The Ring? I must see this!"
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Shit son, get some sleep.
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