Brandon's movie memory

Everyone wanted Vangelis the year after Chariots of Fire, and the two movies who landed him were Blade Runner and this downbeat drama. It’s a dialogue-heavy movie, light on the music, but whenever those classy synths kick in, you float for a little while. Missing Charles aka TV’s Lex Luthor, talks with his pet duck: Gavras was by now typecast as the guy who makes depressing movies about leftists getting destroyed by oppressive military governments, so the coup in Chile was right up his alley.…

I was already a sucker for this movie, another “song can save your life” narrative from Carney with winning actors and actually good songs and a cute Glen Hansard tribute, then Glen died suddenly, and now I’m ready to declare this the most important film of the year. The Odyssey wasn’t any better! Wedding band frontman Paul Rudd has a good relationship with his wife(!) and daughter(!) until he gets depressed and obsessed after his one-night bromance with a Jonas brother ends with Nick stealing…

Series of Bad Decisions in the lead-up to Zendaya-Pattinson wedding. Maid of honor Alana Haim does not forgive Z for claiming to have plotted mass murder in her bullied teen years. Alana’s man Mamoudou Athie (Kinds of Kindness) fails to make peace, and Rob starts to spiral, as the accusations (and vomit) fly and people say more things they can’t take back, either stupidly or drunkenly. Pretty decent writing and performances, for every scene where an actor is impressive there’s another where…

Memorial screening for the great Sam Neill. He and Nicole Kidman are a bereaved couple on a sailing voyage when they meet Billy Zane, typecast as a sexy guy who wants to kill you aboard a sinking ship. His stories about his former vessel don’t add up, and when Sam goes to investigate, Billy takes control and speeds away, leaving Sam to sink and die. But this is one of those movies where the best mechanic / sailor / problem solver wins the day, and Neill is up to the task. Kidman’s no slouch…

One digital motion image after another, feels like installation art. Lot of scrolling or rotating wood textures. Other recurring things: a woman’s face, a man’s hairy body, a laser light show. Leviathan over Arizona: Preening seagull in flames before a MST3K planet floating over a mirrored river and floating heads staring back at us: it all feels vaguely satanic Soundtrack by George Lockwood, that’s half the movie. I was already appreciating the sound effects, then after twenty minutes someone…

Peggy is recovering from a breakdown when she and her maid Griselda kill Peggy’s husband and go on the run. They get molested by a policeman in exchange for help escaping, and make it to a shanty town run by evil queen Edith Massey. These are all Waters regulars except for their new blonde lesbian roommake Muffy (“Nightclub Stripper” in Lady Street Fighter the same year), whose gf Mole gets a sex change at the end, but gets angry-inch’d. Movie is half wonderful, and half annoying (everyone is…

A cheesy propaganda movie, but a moving one in the end. Charles Laughton (between Rembrandt and The Big Clock) is a schoolteacher, living with his mum and keeping his head down during nazi occupation in a town that looks very much like a set. His neighbor (Laughton’s Jamaica Inn costar Maureen O’Hara) has a brother (Kent Smith of Cat People) who is outwardly friendly to the Germans while sabotaging their trains, and now the race is on to find the saboteur before they kill a bunch of random…

Ken shows us a ridiculous silent comedy, then re-shows it, this time splitting the image, or zoomed in on a different section, or showing an entirely different scene with a color flower and a person in silhouette for some reason. We have Peter Tscherkassky at home. Highlights from my soundtrack include Neu 2, the usual Zorn and Warp stuff, and Metallic Life Review. Alex Fields: The length feels like a product of how long it inevitably would be once the decision was made to rework all the…

What a movie to watch as a sober adult. Obviously I needed to see this as a Beatles completist, but also it came up indirectly (about a thousand times) in the last novel I read. Unfunny Monty Python outtakes mixed with a childrens adventure story voiced by Beatle impersonators, it’s not bad. Meanies: But oh, the designs! There’s some really wild animation and character design in this. And the story pauses six or ten times to play an illustrated Beatles song, nothing wrong with that. I thought…

Part political/military drama, part murder investigation, and part a Korean Joyeux Noel. Park’s third feature, and his earliest to make a splash over here, with the future stars of Lady Vengeance, No Other Choice, and Parasite. At a tense militarized border, a couple southerners accidentally cross north and aren’t received too badly, so they cross north again and again, hanging out with their new friends. After they’re discovered and a shootout ensues, it’s up to Lady V to discover the truth.

I was this old when I found out pool and billiards are different games. The heck are you supposed to do on a billiard table with no pockets? Paul Newman doesn’t know either – he’s a pool guy, traveling with older partner Charlie (of an Andy Griffith war comedy), drinking heavily and winning games against suckers, until he goes broke trying to defeat poolmaster Jackie Gleason, gets his thumbs busted by some guys he ripped off, and lays low with his new drunk gal Piper Laurie for a while. Paul…

The boosters (Zola, Nasha, Emerald) are ripping off clothes from Demi Moore’s fashion empire, belatedly joined by a Chinese garment worker with a stolen teleporter and a vendetta. Don Cheadle runs a pyramid scheme called Friends Being Friendly “Our lunch is 30 seconds” LaKeith Stanfield (not pictured) plays a guy so cool the camera can’t look at him without blurring and shaking.

Not many places the story can go after opening with our guy in jail. It rewinds to him building a house for his hateful mom, then further, as a boy also failing to please mom. After the house, he moves new wife Erika to Munich and gets a construction job, where he works himself half to death (this is my second movie of the week where someone finances some furniture). Sure he’s a shopaholic capitalist, but he simply bought into the dream that if you work hard at a job you’re very good at, you…

Opens with a tiresome assembly of college revolutionaries, and closes with a fancy house exploding again and again, all of its contents blasted into the air in lovely slow-motion. In between is a shaggy story of aimless young people with inconsistent dubbing, just what you’d expect from Antonioni. Mark, a white guy with sideburns, has maybe shot a cop and definitely stolen a plane. He’s flying over the desert when he spots a girl in a car, and starts casually north-by-northwesting her. This is…

I’ve watched part one before. Color fields flash and fade. Shots of the house and children have been turned into reddish defocused funhouse blobs. Almost-normal photography at the very end of a young kid feeding an even younger kid with a spoon. 2. Distinct textures in this one, not just more of the same. Added to the funhouse effect is some Melies house transformations with the kids as actors/witnesses, shimmering particle effects, and some really nice superimpositions, while the film…

Based on a true story, shot on location in Michigan, and the source of all the lawyer quotes (the judge is played by the real “at long last have you no sense of decency” guy, and Jimmy Stewart tells him “I’m just a simple country lawyer”). Also a fleet, twisty, morally ambiguous story of an underdog law team winning a defense case that they maybe should’ve lost. Jimmy and his clients: Jimmy takes the case of killer Ben Gazzara, who murdered the rapist of his wife Lee Remick. Now the prosecution…

Annoyingly square 1950s movie with a worm of weirdness in the middle. Mostly it’s clumsily-made propaganda, but the dialogue pops at times, and EGOT Helen Hayes is very good, bringing real personality to a bland mother role. Movie feels like a play, with long takes (ruined with weird edits via optical zoom), the family naturalistically stuttering over their lines. You wouldn’t think it’s the work of a 30-year veteran director, but at least it’s lovably eccentric – you also wouldn’t guess this…

Possibly the first Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie I’ve ever watched on its own – though I followed up by immediately rewatching the episode. Somewhere along the way I heard that the movie is actually excellent, and that’s not true; it’s Italian Batman Mabuse 007, but the color really pops on the new blu-ray and I got to listen to Ennio’s “Deep Down” for four hours. Eva: Eva (artist’s rendition): Diabolik was in Barbarella the same year, and those would make a great double-feature: jokey…

Meant to be televised in 1969 but withheld for decades because the Stones were afraid of The Who – and for good reason, the latter’s version of “A Quick One” is the greatest performance in any rock doc I’ve seen lately. Staged inside a circus tent with acrobats and stuff in between music acts, passing through a wild Lennon/Ono act and culminating in a decently good Stones set. Of the bands I didn’t already know, Taj Mahal’s amped-up bar band > Jethro Tull’s flutey rock > Marianne Faithfull’s…

Great writing and premise, as poor hungry gal Loretta Young (who I just saw in The Stranger) is pitied by rich guy Spencer Tracy and taken out for a nice meal. Only he’s not rich, just pretending, and they get kicked out and retreat to his shanty town. She loves the place and wants to settle down there, but Tracy likes to move from town to town, plus they’ve gotta eat to stay alive, so already a few conflicts before throwing in the predatory criminal next door (a banker in The Devil Doll, a…

Mom (Petra von Kant) and Dad (Alex Allerson of all the ’76 Fassbinders) are leaving town on separate business trips, leaving their daughter with the mute nurse (Godard’s Married Woman). But all three adults are having secret affairs, and head to the same country house, where they try to play it off and have a good time together since they’re all equally busted. Dad is with hottie Anna Karina, mom is with dad’s employee Bruno, the nanny is with blonde Volker Spengler (fly guy of Satan’s Brew).…

The woman is Anna (of a couple episodes of Les Vampires), and she runs a bar on an otherwise uninhabited island (how does she restock?) with her young son and shellshocked husband. A ship full of sailors and workers arrive on the island searching for radium, not yet realizing their bosses are either incompetent or scam artists and they’ll find nothing. But while there, they cause as much trouble as possible while trying to get the woman’s attention. A couple of famous cinematic policemen are in…

A Magical Mystery Tour parody, I think. A Monkee wonderful-lifes himself off a bridge, then a girl makes out with each Monkee in turn in a single take. A highlight is Mickey puncturing a Western scene by swiping away the fake arrows and walking through the backdrop. Maybe not a highlight but certainly memorable is when the boys get shrunk to dandruff-size then are vacuumed off Vic Morrow’s head. Pretty meaty role for Timothy Carey. Jack Nicholson pops in for three seconds, and Frank Zappa…

Comically evil monocled crown prince Roy D’Arcy (The Last Warning) and his more traditionally evil-rich-guy cousin John Gilbert (star of The Big Parade the same year) are both charmed by traveling performer Mae Murray and compete to get her into bed. Gilbert really falls for her, but the royal family says he can’t marry a commoner, so she thinks he hasn’t been serious. After plans to marry the least-evil of the royals falls apart, she decides to marry the evilest guy around as revenge: the…

Would’ve made a good One Battle After Another double-feature. A wanted couple is staying on the move, low on resources and comrades. Their teenage daughter is starting to become a liability, acting impulsively and attracting attention. In increasing order of importance, the daughter just wants: cigarettes, stability, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, trip-hop. A boy she meets tells her about his parents vacant modernist house, so the family moves in and plans one more bank job. Surely if they can pull…

Ray Milland, even younger than in The Big Clock and hardly looking like his X-Ray self – supposedly quit drinking a week ago and is acting outraged that anyone would suspect him of falling off, while he’s busily hiding bottles around the apartment. Looking crazed and desperate from the start, he steals the maid’s money and hits the town, staying at the bar late enough that his brother and wife leave on their planned trip without him. Ray is so happy with his booze – why would anyone deprive him…

German and British forces and some chaotic individuals are shacked up together in an understaffed desert hotel in Egypt, like a WWII Dragon Inn. The Five Graves are where Rommel’s archaeologist friend buried advance supplies for the nazis to take Cairo. Escaped British soldier masquerading as hotel worker Franchot Tone (Phantom Lady) hopes to use his position to kill Rommel (Erich von Stroheim), but his captured compatriots instruct him to escape with the map details to foil the African…

Follow-up to Soldier of Orange features another bunch of young male friends. These guys ride bikes together and have literal dick-measuring contests, and most of them will meet bad ends. Rutger’s getting too old to play a teenager so he’s the local motorbike champion they idolize. Still too plotty and obvious, but the great 4th Man was up next and Paul’s next couple of decades would be very good. Rien with his girl in the good early days: The girl on the poster is future 4th Man star Renée…

Good manic pervert movie, like a euro-arthouse John Waters, with rapid banter and exclusively eccentric characters. I’ve seen Kurt Raab in four other Fassbinder movies, always in minor roles. Here he’s the lead, a broke poet, having become violent and desperate with writer’s block. His put-upon wife and shut-in brother (a fly-plucker whom Kurt once calls a guter junge, hmmm) are supportive, but he finds a devoted fan of his work in Petra von Kant. Illness, murder and fake murder all follow, as…

Good twisty wartime spy story from Paul “subtlety is for cowards” Verhoeven. Not one of his best movies – too plotty and obvious – but clearly crucial to his whole deal (it wouldn’t be his last film about resistance fighters betraying their own people for profit). Rutger and his college buds bond over his hazing experience by entering WWII (“a spot of war would be quite exciting”), ending up on different sides, then bumping into (and/or killing) each other. Guus (4th Man star Jeroen Krabbé)…