Ishmael Lasting

· 3mo ago

#LetterboxdFriday DOOR III [🇯🇵 ] None of these Door movies have any connection to the others, except that they have doors in them.Idea: Let's just retrospectively claim any horror movie with a door in it is part of the franchise ⭐⭐⭐ CARITA DE CIELO [🇲🇽 ] Acceptably entertaining screwball(ish) comedy ⭐⭐⭐ AVENTURERA [🇲🇽 ] Gloriously overcooked melodrama with dance numbers and people wearing bananas on their heads. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ BYE BYE LOVE [🇯🇵 ] A while back, I decided I was overusing the term 'Godardian' in these mini-reviews, but if I can't use it for this film, I can't use it for anything. If you like Breathless and Pierrot le Fou, you could do worse than add this to your watchlist ⭐⭐⭐⭐ #LastFourWatched

· 5mo ago

#LetterboxdFriday THE HIRELING - 🇬🇧 A chauffeur, traumatised by the war, falls for a depressed aristo. It doesn't end well for him. There's a lot going on here. It has a literary depth to it. But it's dry ⭐⭐⭐ THE RED & THE WHITE - 🇭🇺 🎶 War! (Huh, good god) What is it good for? Eastern European arthouse films made in opposition to it. Say it again 🎶 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ TOUCH OF EVIL - 🇺🇸 Classic, innit. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ MR ARKADIN - 🇫🇷 🇪🇸 Not sure which cut of this I saw the first time around, but it wasn't this 'Comprehensive Version', which salvages the film, but still leaves it very rough around the edges. ⭐⭐⭐ #LastFourWatched

· 5mo ago

In 1946, in a 'Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?'' gesture, 11 films tied for the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. These are 4 of those films.

ANTOINE & ANTOINETTE - 🇫🇷

A working class couple win the lottery and lose the ticket. Masterfully directed. Comfortably the best film of these four

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

PASTORAL SYMPHONY - 🇫🇷

A pastor takes in a blind orphan, falls in love with her when she grows up... and his love rival is his own son. So... ick.

My favourite moment is when it suddenly occurs to them (after she's a fully grown adult) that a surgeon might be able to fix her eyesight. And he does. All kinds of stupid, but entertaining

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

MARIA CANDELARIA - 🇲🇽

The intentional artificiality is nice -- almost Powell & Pressburger level -- but it's VERY melodramatic even for the 40s

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

MEN WITHOUT WINGS - 🇨🇿 🇸🇰 [Actually Czechoslovakia]

Solid Czech Resistance versus Nazis thriller

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

· 6mo ago

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN - 🇬🇧

Hammer Studios. Peter Cushing. Christopher Lee. You know the score.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

THE BRIDE! - 🇺🇸

First 45 minutes: 'I don't know what its detractors are talking about - this film is clearly a masterpiece.' Final hour and 15 minutes: 'OK... they may have a point.'

Fun. Ambitious. Messy.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

THE VANISHING - 🇳🇱

Classic feel bad Euro horror.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

THE STRANGER - 🇫🇷

Fairly faithful adaptation of the Albert Camus novel, but goes about it all in a too obvious manner. How obvious? They actually play The Cure's "Killing an Arab" over the end credits in case you needed a summary of the film's themes.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

· 6mo ago

RESURRECTION - 🇨🇳

This is quite something, although at 2hrs 40, I suspect it requires a higher than average tolerance for not knowing quite what's happening for long periods of time

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA - 🇯🇵

Grittier remake of Japanese classic that isn't quite as good, but does stand on its own merits

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

EMMA (TV FILM) - 🇬🇧

Kate Beckinsale makes no attempt to be likeable as Emma. Thumbs up. Sam Morton is a good Harriet, because Sam Morton is good at everything. Mark Strong's Knightley is too stern though. It turns an unexpected romance into 'What does she see in him?' Solid enough though

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

EMMA (TV MINISERIES) - 🇬🇧

There are film adaptations that demonstrate you can tell this story in 2 hours, but inevitably if you've got 4 to play with, you can tell it better.

Also, the relationship between Romola Garai's Emma and Johnny Lee Miller's Knightley is (usually) more playful here so the attraction works

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

· 7mo ago

MAI '68, LA BELLE OUVRAGE - 🇫🇷

Fairly straightforward documentary with footage from the protests alongside testimonies of the people who were there

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

SUMMER OF SOUL - 🇺🇸

The footage from the Harlem Cultural Festival is magnificent and alone earns the five stars, but the documentary also does an excellent job of contextualising the event and its 'disappearance' from public memory. Look at that Gladys Knight & The Pips dance routine!

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

ELDRIDGE CLEAVER, BLACK PANTHER - 🇫🇷

He's in exile in Algeria. The director asks him questions. It's fine.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

THE MIRROR - 🇮🇷

I remember the first time I saw this and at around the 40 minute mark thinking 'This is really good, but with respect, Mr Panahi, you've kind of made this film already.' And then, boom, it flipped. So, in a way, I did that!

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

· 6mo ago

THE PASSION OF ANNA - 🇸🇪

Ingmar Bergman. Sven Nykvist. Max von Sydow. Liv Ullmann. Bibi Andersson. Never goes too far wrong, does it?

NOROI: THE CURSE - 🇯🇵

A journalist investigates paranormal events that (I don't think it's a spoiler) all turn out to be linked. Nicely woven found footage folk horror

12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST - 🇷🇴

At 12:08pm on the 22nd of December 1989 Nicolae Ceaușescu fled Bucharest. Dry comedy mostly focused around a TV debate about whether this particular town had a revolution or if people waited to take to the streets until 12:09.

THE LONG FAREWELL - 🇺🇦 [USSR, actually]

So stylistically odd, the Soviets didn't let director Kira Muratova make another film for seven years despite it not being narratively troubling. Say what you will about them, but those Stalinists knew genuine subversion when they saw it.

All films this week get ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

#UK #politics #UKpolitics

· 5mo ago

Apparently, Keir Starmer has told European leaders they must face up to the fact that relations with the US are 'under strain.'

This from the man who repeatedly claims he doesn't believe the UK has to choose between closer ties to Europe and closer ties to the USA. This from a man who sent the King to Congress to argue that the relationship between the UK and US was 'unbreakable and irreplaceable.'

He's got some hide, hasn't he? In a world of Keir Starmers, be more Mark Carney.

· 5mo ago

#LetterboxdFriday THERESE RAQUIN - 🇫🇷 The kind of technically solid, high quality but sterile literary adaptation that provoked the French New Wave -- so I suppose we should be grateful for that ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ FATA MORGANA - 🇩🇪 Werner Herzog's lyrical documentary about mirages. Or something ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ OUT OF THE PAST - 🇺🇸 Weirdly (to me anyway), I hadn't seen this before. Has absolutely everything I could possibly want from a classic noir. Gorgeous photography, smart-arse 'hard-boiled' dialogue, double-crosses, unnecessarily complex plot structure, &c. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ THE SEVENTH CONTINENT - 🇦🇹 All these years on, Michael Haneke's feature debut demonstrates that Michael Haneke arrived fully-formed ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ #LastFourWatched

· 5mo ago

THE GARDEN OF STONES - 🇮🇷

A man gets a vision and starts stringing stones up in trees and doing dervish dances. The authorities come out to take a look. 'No, he isn't crazy. He's an artist.' Strange, but mesmerising film

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

CRIMSON GOLD - 🇮🇷

A look at inequity in Iran drives a pizza delivery man to extreme but futile action.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

HOW TO IRRITATE PEOPLE - 🇬🇧

Proto-Python TV sketch show special that needed more work and less sexism

THE ROUND-UP - 🇭🇺

Before it could be exhibited, director Miklós Jancsó had to sign a paper declaring this was not about the failed 1956 Hungarian uprising or in any way anti-Soviet. It's about the failed 1956 Hungarian uprising and anti-Soviet.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

· 7mo ago

#LetterboxdFriday MARTY SUPREME -🇺🇸 Liked it, didn't love it. Three main reasons why not: 1) 2.5hr character study of a man who doesn't really have one. He's driven, he's unscrupulous, he's self-absorbed. I get it. What else have you got?. 2) Stuff-stuff-stuff, busy-busy-busy, happen-happen-happen makes it feel a bit one-note. 3) That's an ending straight out of the Hays Code -- be as much as a villain as you like, as long as you get punished or find redemption in the final reel, however jarringly... But it was entertaining, if rather wearing. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ KAMILLA - 🇳🇴 Adult drama from a child's perspective. Like the To Kill a Mocking Bird of post-war marital infidelity ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ THE SNOW WHITE MURDER CASE - 🇯🇵 Slick and absorbing jigsaw whodunnit with a touch of Rashomon in its DNA ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ASHES & DIAMONDS - 🇵🇱 Gorgeously photographed all-time classic, innit. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ #LastFourWatched

· 8mo ago

#LetterboxdFriday Ingrid and Alfred double-bill: SPELLBOUND - 🇺🇸 - Two main problems with Spellbound. 1) The silly, po-faced psychoanalysis stuff does weigh it down, and 2) Hitchcock just happened to make better movies using this 'man on the run' template both before and after it ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ UNDER CAPRICORN -🇬🇧 - Uncharacteristic slowburn period drama from Hitch. He considered it to be a 'mistake'. The Cahiers du Cinema lot thought it was among his very finest films. I don't entirely subscribe to either of those views, but the French were closer than the big man ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ SARRAOUINIA - 🇧🇫 🇲🇷 - Ambitiously constructed anti-colonialist war epic ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ NEIGHBOURING SOUNDS - 🇧🇷 - One of those films where I think 'Yes, OK, but where are you going with this?' for quite a lot of the runtime, but it all comes together in the end ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ #LastFourWatched

· 7mo ago

#LetterboxdFriday NEECHA NAGAR - 🇮🇳 Curious hodgepodge of styles: by turns social realism, expressionism, melodrama. And it's Hindi, so it inevitably throws in some musical numbers. The people of 'the Lower City' rise up against the cruelty of the municipal government. No-one actually mentions the British, but it's India in 1946. The subtext is clear. ('This our land, not your land') Movie's in a bloody awful state though. Memo to India: 'film preservation' is not a dirty term ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ THE HERO - 🇮🇳 One of Satyajit Ray's many masterpieces. One of the best to ever do it Satyajit Ray ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ KOKUHO - 🇯🇵 Decade-spanning three-hour kabuki epic. Shade over-long perhaps, but mostly rather wonderful ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ THE IMAGINARIUM OF DR.PARNASSUS - 🇬🇧 🇨🇦 Terry Gilliam enters the self-parodic phase of his career ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ #LastFourWatched

· 6mo ago

BROKEN VOICES - 🇨🇿 🇸🇰

Subtle, based-on-true-story drama about grooming and abuse in a prestigious girls' choir. Beautifully acted by its young cast

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

FRAULEIN - 🇩🇪

A young woman from Bosnia changes the outlook of an older woman from Yugoslavia ('No-one calls it that any more') through what the blurb calls 'an unlikely friendship'. Solid enough, but hits a few too many cliches along its way

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD - 🇬🇧 🇺🇸

Postcard pretty York Notes adaptation of the novel that hits most of the major plot points but completely misses the soul of the book by flattening the story down to a bucolic romance.

Also, Bathsheba Everdene is so modern, she doesn't know the origin of her own first name. In 19th century England? O...K.

But it's zippy and I can't pretend I wasn't entertained

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

AURORA - 🇷🇴

Imagine Chantal Akerman had made Taxi Driver. It's a little bit like that

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

· 8mo ago

WHEN I SAW YOU - 🇵🇸

A defiant little boy in a refugee camp decides to walk back to Palestine. On the one hand, he should probably listen to his mother more. On the other hand.... Excellently paced drama

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

GABBEH - 🇮🇷

Elderly couple wash a rug, magically bringing to life one of the characters in the design to tell the history of her tribe. Colourful, lyrical and strange

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

TEN - 🇮🇷

A woman drives a car and has a number - of conversations with passengers that focus on the plight of women under the regime of Islamic Republic . That's it. That's the film

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

THE CLAY BIRD - 🇧🇩

East Pakistan is about to become Bangladesh. A little boy is sent to an Islamic school. The film balances domestic drama against the political background.. but is too small for the story it is telling, as underscored when the Pakistani army arrives for the crackdown... entirely off-screen. All round feels a bit televisual

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

· 6mo ago

HARAKIRI - 🇯🇵

Stone cold classic, innit

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

TOKYO TWILIGHT - 🇯🇵

Peak Ozu

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

ONLY ON MONDAYS - 🇯🇵

Possibly the most French New Wave Japanese New Wave film I've seen. Starts off like an artsy exploitation flick, gets dark, ends with a cathartic visual joke about patriarchy. Also, lots of long close-ups of Mariko Kaga's face = cinema!

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

FULL CIRCLE - 🇬🇧 🇨🇦

Atmospheric ghost story with Mia Farrow as a bereaved mother. I couldn't help but feel the story it looked like it was setting up would have been more interesting than the one it became

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

· 7mo ago

#LetterboxdFriday HONEY DON'T! - 🇺🇸 Ethan Coen makes another pretend Coen Bros film. Has a number of the elements we associate with real Coen Bros films, but doesn't quite work ⭐ ⭐ SHALL WE DANCE? - 🇯🇵 Married man going through middle-age crisis sees a pretty young woman in a window and joins a ballroom dancing class... but it all turns out much more charming than it sounds. Only Japanese film I've ever seen that talks reverently about Blackpool Winter Gardens ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ SUMO DO, SUMO DON'T - 🇯🇵 A rubbish university sumo team gets quite good. Similar theme to Shall We Dance? with people accidentally falling in love with niche 'old-fashioned' activities, but the comedy is a bit broader here ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ MEETING WITH POL POT - 🇰🇭 🇫🇷 Solid enough overall, but the decision to keep Pol Pot in shadows and never show his face makes him into a comic book villain in a film that otherwise plays a straight bat ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ #LastFourWatched

· 8mo ago

DAGUERREOTYPES - 🇫🇷

Agnes Varda films the shopkeepers on her street. And it's wonderful

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

RUE DAGUERRE IN 2005 - 🇫🇷

Basically a DVD featurette -- remember those? -- going back to the same street 30 years later.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

NO OTHER CHOICE - 🇰🇷

Park Chan-wook's dark comedy about the ruthlessness capitalism can enforce on us all

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

LATE AUGUST, EARLY SEPTEMBER - 🇫🇷

In 1990s French cinema, everybody was a writer with a literary agent. Everybody. Another thing the internet destroyed. Ha.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

· 6mo ago

'Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for Lola
La-la-la-la Lola'

Always very easy to take the piss out of #Moby, but I'm not sure how anyone can come away from The Kinks' #Lola and think it's 'unevolved'. Bizarre take.

Would you write it exactly the same way nearly 60 years later? No, probably not. But Ray Davies was one of the great pop lyricists and Moby... also works in the music industry.

· 6mo ago

Judging from the clips, SNL UK has a curiously mid-Atlantic pitch. There's a space in British television for a mainstream, topical sketch show, and maybe it'll develop into something as the overall reaction seems to have been 'not as horrible as anticipated', but you simply can't appeal to a British mainstream sensibility and an American mainstream sensibility at the same time. So if they don't do a reverse 'Office' and basically go in their own direction with it after the first episode, I can't see it surviving beyond its initial curiosity value. So... now you know.

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@MiaMarkTwo@syzito.xyz Yessss. Quite.

· 8mo ago

@hex@dads.cool @onuryasar@mastodon.online I think that's true. And it's true of pretty much all the musicals I like (Dancer in the Dark is another favourite). It's the convention and the lightness I don't like... because I'm a grinch.

It's also, incidentally, why I hated La La Land. That borrows its template from Umbrellas, but when the love story is spoilt rich kids whose time together is disrupted by Hollywood career aspirations instead of someone being drafted into the Algerian effing war, it doesn't just lack the same resonance, I find it borderline offensive in its indulgence. But anywaaaay...

· 8mo ago

@hex@dads.cool @onuryasar@mastodon.online Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of my favourite films. Top 10. Well, depending on the day. But it floats around there. And -- *drum roll* -- I'm not that fond of musicals generally. But because it's sung-through among other reasons, yeah, masterpiece

· 7mo ago

Replying to on mastodon.online

@onuryasar@mastodon.online Ha. I'd review things on Letterboxd if you could restrict who can see them to just the people who follow you already. But public reviews feels too close to getting into the 'likes' and 'follows' game of social media to me. It's quieter over here on Mastodon

· 39mo ago

Replying to

@brianvastag @Mastodon Not on launch. They intend to federate, but right at this moment Threads is not in the fediverse. 'We expect that eventually Mastodon and Threads will be interoperable'

#ThisTweetMayNotActuallyBeAboutCars

· 7mo ago

If I accidentally ram into the back of your car because my brakes don't work, you have every right to be livid about the damage I caused to your car. What we can't do, however, is pretend that accidentally ramming your car and doing it on purpose ,with malice aforethought, are the exact same thing -- legally or morally. Intent matters. Context matters.

· 8mo ago

Y'know what? There are some echoes of Suez 1956 in what just happened to the US over Greenland.

· 6mo ago

I know it's easy to say from the western part of Europe, but Trump 'considering' withdrawal from #Nato feels like being threatened with a good time. Imagine a Europe where our leaders were no longer obliged to turn a blind eye to American interference in our politics (Far more invasive and sustained than any covert operations from Russia or China). Imagine a Europe where there was no good reason to allow rapacious, parasitical American corporations access to our economies. Imagine a Europe that only cherry-picked the very best the American entertainment industry had to offer instead of allowing itself to be inundated with all their shite and dodgy values in a completely lopsided cultural relationship, where they're in permanent broadcast mode. Bring the Aussies, the Koreans, the Japanese, anyone else who wants to come along and say... Buh-bye, America.

· 5mo ago

I increasingly find that people who would consider themselves to be 'America First' have very strong opinions about what's happening in other countries. They know fuck all about it, obviously, but, oh boy, do they enjoy parading their ignorance. If you're going to be America First, how about minding your business?