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La Notte 1961
Another great Antonioni film, another cool turn from Marcello Mastroianni, this is an entertaining mix of depth and superficial image, with the central characters (Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau) reconsidering their relationship with one another, and how they feel about the social circles they now move in.
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Daguerréotypes 1975
People just living and vibing is my favorite kind of movie. And Varda makes everything look so good without trying to overcompensate for the inherent ordinariness of her subjects. The magician guy gets pretty annoying after a while, though.
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Withnail & I 1987
"Don't threaten me with a dead fish!"
There's absolutely no reason for Paul McGann's Marwood to be anywhere near as sexy as he is, and yet, there I was, thirsting for 108 straight (or, perhaps, not-so-straight) minutes. I mean, his whole "softboi deep-thinker who reads and wears nice jumpers" schtick is catnip to me at the best of times, but when he walks out of the front door of that holiday home in boots, an overcoat, underwear, and nothing else,…
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Miami Vice: Brother's Keeper 1984
Brother's Keeper, the feature-length first episode of the first season of Miami Vice, introduced Don Johnson as Sonny Crockett, a respected vice detective with a chaotic family life who resides in a boat with his pet alligator named Elvis. Winner of two Emmys, one for Robert E. Collins' cinematography and the other for sound editing, it features a Jan Hammer synthesised score that includes the best television signature tune this side of Stuart Phillips' Knight Rider theme. There are numerous…
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The IX Olympiad in Amsterdam 1928
i’ve been watching everything on the criterion channel in alphabetical order for some reason and this was so long and boring idk why i made myself sit through it
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Robot Jox 1989
Writer Joe Haldeman and director Stuart Gordon definitely watched Rocky IV a few too many times, but this is more entertaining than it has any right to be. Credit David W. Allen's stop-motion and the initial world-building (that's thrown away in favor of a mano a mano mecha match). Dialogue is also unintentionally(?) hilarious.
Robot Jox: the dystopian dream of a male middle schooler who always wanted to see Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots play out as a movie. -
Mahjong 1996
A deeply bitter lament masquerading as sprawling, Altmanesque comedy; Taipei’s densely populated world of greedy expats and gangsters and nouveau riche like some sad microcosm of a world in which cosmopolitan ideals end up just so many new kinds of imperialism. “These people have so much money stuffed up their ass it’s beyond belief! You know, in ten years this place will be the center of the world. The future of Western civilization lies right here!” Yang drops us in…
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Nightmare Alley 2021
Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light
I’m not sure if the B&W version is MUCH better than the color but a second watch gave me so much to chew on.
I continue to adore David Straithairn and Toni Colette, and honestly Cate’s Bacallian brilliance was all the more obvious and exciting the less distracted I was by the colors in her INCREDIBLE inlaid burl-wood office
I caught this time too that at the end TBN not only had Enoch…
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Icahn: The Restless Billionaire 2022
Not sure the film explores the duality of Carl Icahn as much as it thinks it does, but there are some interesting zingers here. "I made all this money because the system is bad, not because I'm a genius." is a moment that registers pretty loud. The more I learn about how money works in the U.S. the more it makes no sense whatsoever. Icahn: The Restless Billionaire does a well enough job, though, of taking us through Wall Street and how it worked for Icahn. It's compelling, even if a bit slight.
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Cameraperson 2016
6/52
11. 2010sKirsten Johnson directed this experimental documentary that juxtaposes various clips of footage she shot for various documentaries over twenty plus years. While the film at first seems to be a random assembly of clips from all over the world involving places that Johnson traveled to, thematic threads suddenly unravel, making the film a coherent and unified pice exploring such issues as the ethics a filmmaker has to wrestle with in relation to her subjects,…
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