last week’s films…

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Pathfinder (1987), Nils Gaup ★★★★★

Meet the Filmmakers: Athina Rachel Tsangari (September 2016), FilmStruck 51 ★★★★★

Austin, Texas. At the post office buying stamps and bumping into Richard Linklater, who asks: are you here for the audition (Slacker)?

Fit (1994), Athina Rachel Tsangari ★★★★★

The Capsule (2012), Athina Rachel Tsangari ★★★★★

24 Frames Per Century (2013), Athina Rachel Tsangari ★★★★★

I told you someone would come.

You’re just an optimist.

Someone has to be.

That Night’s Wife (1930), Yasujiro Ozu ★★★★★

The Edge of Seventeen (2016), Kelly Fremon Craig ★★

Dumbland (2002) episode 1-8, David Lynch ★★★★★

Needle (2013), Anahita Ghazvinizadeh ★★★★★

The Trip to Bountiful (1985), Peter Masterson ★★★★★

Enchanted April (1991), Mike Newell ★★★★★

Monterey Pop (1968), D.A. Pennebaker ★★★★★



Winter Light (1963), Ingmar Bergman ★★★★★



Daisies (1966), Vera Chytilova ★★★★★



The Children Are Watching Us (1944), Vittorio De Sica ★★★★★

Smoke Signals (1998), Chris Eyre ★★★★★

You want me to sign a paper or something?

No way. You know how Indians feel about signing papers.

Set Me Free (1999), Lea Pool ★★★★★

Carmen Comes Home (1951), Keisuke Kinoshita ★★★★★

Equinox (1970), Jack Woods 82 ★★★★★



Robinson Crusoe (1954), Luis Bunuel ★★★★★

Obsession (1949), Edward Dmytryk ★★★★★

Capricious Summer (1968), Jiri Menzel ★★★★★

Story of a Love Affair (1950), Michelangelo Antonioni ★★★★★

Jaws (1975), Steven Spielberg ★★★★★

He didn’t eat a car, did he?

A nos amours (1983), Maurice Pialat ★★★★★

Powwow Highway (1989), Jonathan Wacks ★★★★★

A Hen in the Wind (1948), Yasujiro Ozu ★★★★★

A Nous la Liberte (1931), Rene Clair ★★★★★

Blossoms & Blood (2003), Paul Thomas Anderson ★★★★★

Soundbreaking (2016), episodes 1-8, PBS ★★★★★

Woodstock was probably the biggest door I ever walked in to. I remember that I was, the influence level of the beat, damn, why did I take LSD before I went on? You know the, the guitar neck, it felt more like an electric snake that wouldn’t stand still, that’s why I’m making ugly faces trying to make the snake stand still so I can like play it you know. I remember saying over and over, God, I’ll never do this again. Ever. If you can just keep me in time and in tune. That’s all I ask. That was my first mantra.

– Carlos Santana, ep 5
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last week’s films…

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Last 8 (weekly lists always have the latest on top) were streamed on Filmstruck.

Safety Last! (1923), Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor ★★★★★

There were certain days she could be sure to get a letter from him. They were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.



Lady Snowblood (1973), Toshiya Fujita ★★★★★  movie of the week

The morning has died, and the snow falls in mourning.



Daybreak Express (1953), D.A. Pennebaker ★★★★★

Music by Duke Ellington.

The Executioner (1963), Luis Garcia Berlanga ★★★★★

Father, what’s his neck size?

Black Something (2016), David Zellner, Nathan Zellner ★★★★★

“In late 2015, “Bright Ideas” magazine and its publisher, the innovative crowdfunding and distribution platform Seed & Spark, commissioned directing duo the Zellner Bros. (KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER) to make a short piece in response to a Criterion Collection release that they considered inspiring. The brothers chose Louis Malle’s wild, hallucinogenic BLACK MOON (1975), itself a tripped-out reimagining of “Alice in Wonderland.” Shot in the woods near their Austin homes, BLACK SOMETHING captures Malle’s blending of idyllic pastoral imagery with nightmarish fantasy, distilling it into a skin-crawlingly unsettling three-minute short.”

– Filmstruck Criterion Channel

Incident at Oglala (1992), Michael Apted ★★★★★

Diva Dolorosa (1999), Peter Delpeut ★★★★★

Footnote (2011), Joseph Cedar ★★★★★

Hacksaw Ridge (2016), Mel Gibson ★★★★★

To Have and Have Not (1944), Howard Hawks ★★★★★ rewatch

Was you ever bit by a dead bee?

I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman (2015), Marianne Lambert ★★★★★

Then her own daughter makes this film Jeanne Deilman. And I show something I can feel within her and her aunts. And something that leaves no place for piano lessons. Or anything else for that matter. Only the repetition, the obsession, the confinement, the corridors, the kitchens.

No Home Movie (2015), Chantal Akerman ★★★★★

In the Good Old Summertime (1949), Robert Z. Leonard, Buster Keaton ★★★★★ rewatch

First remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940). Always nice to see Judy Garland’s 3 year old daughter Liza Minnelli in the last scene.

Once a Chicken (2015), Evan Johnson, Guy Maddin ★★★★★



Tatsumi (2013), Eric Khoo ★★★★★

Don’t push. You’ll break the door open.

Damn! We’re packed in here like sardines, while the cows are traveling like royalty.

Famous Nathan (2014), Lloyd Handwerker ★★★

Cafe Society (2016), Woody Allen ★★★★★

You have this deer in the headlights quality.

Arrival (2016), Denis Villeneuve ★★★★★
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last week’s films…

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High Hopes (1988), Mike Leigh ★★★★★

Two Mike Leigh films this week, High Hopes and All or Nothing.  Both with Ruth Sheen, who reminds me of a British Shelley Duvall. She stars with Timothy Spall in All or Nothing (2002), and are both in Mr. Turner (2014). All of the Mike Leigh movies I’ve seen are gems.

Train to Busan (2016), Yeon Sang-ho ★★★

Antonia’s Line (1996), Marleen Gorris ★★★★★

Isn’t it terrible that nothing exists?

That’s why there’s so much.

A.K. (1985), Chris Maker ★★★★★

Seventy four minute documentary with Akira Kurosawa on the slopes of Mt. Fuji making Ran (1985).

Christmas in the Clouds (2001), Kate Montgomery ★★★★★

He used to take pictures with the tourists. Let the little kids ride him. We called him…, Kevin.

Another Woman (1988), Woody Allen ★★★★★

All or Nothing (2002), Mike Leigh ★★★★★

Yeah it was nice. I had that and mash and like green cauliflower stuff.

Oh yeah broccoli.

The Last Waltz (1978), Martin Scorsese ★★★★★

The Handmaiden (2016), Park Chan-wook ★★★★★

TEKKONKINKREET (2007), Michael Arias ★★★★★

And I thought Satoshi Kon was the end all be all. Well, he is, but now there’s Michael Arias. I don’t think he’s an animator like SK, but you can’t have everything.

When the sky turns black why do I feel blue?

An Angel at My Table (1990), Jane Campion ★★★★★

Certain Women (2016), Kelly Reichardt ★★★★★ movie of the week

New #1 for the year.

I see her movies at the theater as soon as I hear about it. Two scenes: one with water flowing by, and another is a close up of two people in a car with the reflection of the clouds and trees passing by, and the conversation gets to the point of being heated and at the same time a mountain starts covering her profile from the neck to the chin to the nose and they’re about to argue and it peaks right around her eyebrows and then it moves down just as things cool off. Very cool camera work.

Three great trailers played before the feature; Julieta (2016), directed by Pedro Almodovar, Personal Shopper (2016), Olivier Assayas, and I, Daniel Blake (2016), Ken Loach. Three movies that I’ll see at the theater.

Ruth Orkin: Frames of Life (1996), Mary Engel ★★★★★
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last week’s films…

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Father of My Children (2009), Mia Hansen-Love ★★★★

Chungking Express (1994), Kar Wai Wong    ★★★★★ rewatch

This film always comes to mind when I think about making an all time top 10 list, or top 5.



Cyrus (2010), Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass ★★★★★

Finding Gaston (2014), Julia Patricia Perez ★★★★★

He said what did you do? I said nothing, I just put them in the freezer so they don’t get rotten. He said look Vitoriano, do you have any idea of how many hours and how much danger these fisherman have gone through to catch this fish? So you can ruin it in a minute?

Youth in Revolt (2009), Miguel Arteta ★★★★★

Jimi Plays Monterey (1986), D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus ★★★★★

Pete Townsend and uh Jimi almost came to blows backstage. Neither one of them wanted to follow the other. So I flipped a coin, and Pete won. Jimi jumped up on a chair and yelled if he was going to follow The Who he was going to pull out all stops and he was going to blow everybody away. And that’s the way it started.

Le Quattro Volte (2010), Michelangelo Frammartino ★★★★★

New #1 for 2011.



A War (Krigen) (2015), Tobias Lindholm ★★★★★

Children of Invention (2009), Tze Chun ★★★★

Posthumous (2014), Lulu Wang ★★★★★

White Bird in a Blizzard (2014), Gregg Araki …did not finish

If I were in a theater, I would’ve walked out.

Mustang (2015), Deniz Gamze Erguven ★★★★★

I only found out later what Auntie Emine did for us.



The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939), Kenji Mizoguchi ★★★★★

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