Viewing Log: 2017
An on-going list of films I watched for the first time in 2017, arranged in the order in which I saw them.
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84 titles
- DirectorFederico FelliniLouis MalleRoger VadimStarsJane FondaBrigitte BardotAlain DelonA trio of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations about a cruel countess haunted by her cousin's stallion, a sadistic soldier haunted by his doppelgänger, and an alcoholic actor haunted by the Devil.The first two films are better than their reputations suggest; they just can't compete with Fellini's frenzied phantasmagorical Toby Dammit. An absolute tour de force of technical filmmaking anchored by a performance from Stamp that seems straight out of the silent cinema. Decadence, both thematic & stylistic, assault the senses as the character's burnt-out fatalism collides with a vision of supernatural retribution.
- 8/10
- DirectorEli RothStarsLorenza IzzoAriel LevyAaron BurnsA group of student activists travels to the Amazon to save the rain forest and soon discover that they are not alone, and that no good deed goes unpunished.I thought the Hostel films reached for something interesting, even if they failed to achieve it. This doesn't even reach. It's the same formula repeated; a band of entitled & unlikable outsiders encounter a potentially dangerous foreign territory that they're too ignorant to understand. Roth aims to satirise the behaviour of the protagonists but instead demonises the indigenous "oddities." The filmmaking is terrible.
- 4/10
- DirectorM. Night ShyamalanStarsJames McAvoyAnya Taylor-JoyHaley Lu RichardsonThree girls are kidnapped by a man with a diagnosed 23 distinct personalities. They must try to escape before the apparent emergence of a frightful new 24th.Almost two decades after Unbreakable, Shyamalan is still making the best comic book movies. That he instills them with genuine themes & rich psychological subtext, for instance the ramifications of child abuse, & isn't simply content with men in rubber costumes firing blue beams of light into the sky, speaks to his individuality. What he's done with the genre on a cinematic level is beyond the reach of his imitators.
- 9/10
- DirectorDanny BoyleStarsAlex EtelJames NesbittDaisy DonovanEthics, being human and the soul come to the fore when a 7-year old finds a bag of Pounds just days before the currency is switched to Euros and learns what we are really made of.The screenplay by Frank Cottrell-Boyce is unfocused but occasionally brilliant, creating a child's eye perspective on the issues of poverty & distribution of wealth, while also telling an engaging story about a family rebuilding itself after experiencing grief. Flights of magical realism are imaginative & moving, but too often the subtleties are bludgeoned by Boyle's characteristically flashy & sensationalist direction.
- 7/10
- DirectorDon SiegelStarsLee MarvinAngie DickinsonJohn CassavetesSurprised that their contract victim didn't try to run away from them, two professional hit men try to find out who hired them and why.A made for TV retread of a film noir classic is given a greater creative heft thanks to the modernist stylisations of director Don Siegel & an amazing performance from the incomparable Lee Marvin. Siegel brings to the film an uncompromising brutality that doesn't always sit comfortably alongside the more generic elements, whilst the flashback structure, which frames the revenge plot as a mystery, remains compelling.
- 7/10
- DirectorChad StahelskiStarsKeanu ReevesMichael NyqvistAlfie AllenAn ex-hitman comes out of retirement to track down the gangsters who killed his dog and stole his car.Essentially a post-'Drive' aesthetic; neon-drenched, detached & sombre; emphasising mood, style, clean lines & clear action. It's a refreshing approach for this kind of DTV material & manages to go some lengths towards elevating a paper-thin plot that offers no credible or satisfying resolution; the whole thing just descending into mindless revenge-porn where the original point of the story gets lost in the carnage.
- 6/10
- DirectorJohn WooStarsLung TiLeslie CheungChow Yun-FatA reforming ex-gangster tries to reconcile with his estranged policeman brother, but the ties to his former gang are difficult to break.A film about betrayals, brotherhood, missed opportunities & the corruption of the modern world. While Woo's film is celebrated for redefining the style & even the language of the "modern" action cinema, it's also a work of great sadness & pathos. The sensitivity shown to its central characters & the calibre of its performances both enriching & deepening our emotional connection to those scenes of balletic gunplay.
- 8/10
- DirectorStephen QuayTimothy QuayAn enigmatic story told in seven chapters, each introduced by an elliptical sentence on a title card. A man is in an apartment. He goes outside where a red tram runs beside a cathedral. He can see religious art. In his apartment and workshop, his nearly colorless life does include a cloth of rich, red brocade. He works amid constructs of straight lines, planks, wires, and scaffolding. He falls from a chair in his flat. He's not dead.This dreamlike journey through an imagined city of cobblestones & gothic dread, establishes many of the obsessions & eccentricities that permeate the later films of the brothers Quay. The story, effectively a nightmare of nocturnal existence, its character drifting as if through sleep, is negligible, but like Eraserhead in miniature, it's the world of the film, its textures & its rhythms, that draws the audience in.
- 9/10
- DirectorKeith GriffithsStephen QuayTimothy QuayIn Prague, a professorial puppet, with metal pincers for hands and an open book for a hat, takes a boy as a pupil. First, the professor empties fluff and toys from the child's head, leaving him without the top of his head for most of the film. The professor then teaches the lad about illusions and perspectives, the pursuit of an object through exploring a bank of drawers, divining an object, and the migration of forms. The child then brings out a box with a tarantula in it: the professor puts his "hands" into the box and describes what he feels. The boy receives a final lesson about animation and film making; then the professor gives him a brain and his own open-book hat.
- 10/10
- DirectorStephen QuayTimothy QuayStarsFeliks StawinskiInside a box full of curio, a puppet who is recently freed from his strings explores a dusty and forlorn commercial area. The explorer becomes ensnared into miniature tailor shop by baby-faced dolls.
- 10/10
- DirectorJohn WooStarsChow Yun-FatTony Leung Chiu-waiTeresa MoA tough-as-nails cop teams up with an undercover agent to shut down a sinister mobster and his crew.Continuing Woo's examination into the workings of the Hong Kong criminal underworld, the divide between the lawful & the lawless, the bond between brothers in arms & the psyche of the anti-hero. While less cohesive & less satisfying than its predecessors, A Better Tomorrow & The Killer, Hard Boiled pushes the Woo aesthetic to breaking point; creating a film that redefines the possibilities of the modern action movie.
- 7/10
- DirectorSergio MartinoStarsGeorge HiltonEdwige FenechIvan RassimovA woman recovering from a car accident in which she lost her unborn child finds herself pursued by a coven of devil worshipers.A murky witches' brew of second-hand giallo iconography & the plot machinations of Rosemary's Baby. Martino gets some good mileage from his atmospheric locations, sense of cold urban detachment & the visual presence of Edwige Fenech, but the story is muddled, & the psychedelic imagery that many claim as the films greatest asset is often just silly. Fulci's somewhat analogous A Lizard in a Woman's Skin feels superior.
- 5/10
- DirectorJackie ChanChi-Hwa ChenStarsJackie ChanMaggie CheungBrigitte LinA virtuous Hong Kong Police Officer must clear his good name when the drug lord he is after frames him for the murder of a dirty cop.With Police Story, Chan proves himself not just a fearless & charismatic screen presence, but a genuine master of cinema. While it doesn't reinvent the wheel as far as basic storytelling is concerned the film does redefine the possibilities of contemporary action cinema; with Chan's experiments with camera speeds, static framing & complex editing of shots to create rhythm showing a true innovation within the form.
- 8/10
- DirectorSammo Kam-Bo HungCorey YuenStarsJackie ChanSammo Kam-Bo HungBiao YuenThree successful Hong Kong lawyers are hired by a chemical company of questionable ethics and must eventually make a difficult decision when their employer's motives become clear.A bona fide action masterpiece & one of the great films of the 1980s. Taking an influence from everything from Buster Keaton & Gene Kelly, to comic books & police procedurals, Dragons Forever finds its stars Chan, Sammo & Biao delivering some of the most astounding, jaw-dropping action choreography ever captured on film. In the process it pushes the conception of a "physical cinema" far beyond its limited capacities
- 10/10
- DirectorSammo Kam-Bo HungStarsSammo Kam-Bo HungCharlie ChinStanley Sui-Fan FungMuscles, cop from Hong Kong, is in Japan chasing a bad HK cop. His cop partner gets taken by the ninja gang. Muscles gets his 5 old no-good friends from the orphanage to help find the bad cop. Lots of comedy and kung-fu fighting follows.Like Joe Dante directing a kung-fu caper, this gonzo, comic-book style blend of frenetic action, pop art visuals & scenes of Three Stooges slapstick hits the ground running with a lengthy chase across several locations & ends with a relentless third act that takes full advantage of its amusement park setting. Mondrian inspired compositions & bright pastels anticipate the filmmaking style of the great Dragons Forever.
- 9/10
- DirectorSammo Kam-Bo HungStarsSammo Kam-Bo HungRichard NgEric Tsang5 HK cops (4 horny males) on vacation in Pattaya, Thailand, are told to contact an informant there but he gets murdered. They return to Hong Kong to contact his girlfriend and protect her. 3 other colleagues are busy fighting criminals.A disappointing outing for the Lucky Stars. There's a smattering of great fight scenes & the same use of bright colors & bold shot composition that made the previous My Lucky Stars such a cinematic delight, but the overt sexism crosses into the realms of the unpleasant & there's an even greater reliance on slapstick comedy, much of which seems lost in translation. Still worth it to see Sammo, Jackie & Yuen in action.
- 6/10
- DirectorHark TsuiStarsTony Ka Fai LeungChao DengCarina LauAn exiled detective is recruited to solve a series of mysterious deaths that threaten to delay the inauguration of Empress Wu.Hark's dedication to (intentionally) bad CGI is kind of radical in a deconstructive sense, but also a problem, denying the brilliant martial arts choreography of Sammo Hung some of its natural, visceral energy. Nonetheless, it's a remarkable film, employing a genuinely interesting murder mystery narrative, with sidelines into political conspiracy & magical realism, with the bold & expressive stylisation of the Wuxia.
- 8/10
- DirectorToshiya FujitaStarsMeiko KajiToshio KurosawaMasaaki DaimonA strikingly beautiful young woman is trained from birth to be a deadly instrument of revenge against the swindlers who destroyed her family.
- 7/10
- DirectorJackie ChanEric TsangStarsJackie ChanAlan TamLola FornerAsian Hawk (Jackie Chan) and his bumbling sidekick are sent on a quest through Europe to find a mysterious treasure held by a shadowy organization of monks.Despite benefiting from some impressive action set-pieces & a great sense of camaraderie between the leads, this is a poor effort from Chan. A culturally insensitive prologue (supposedly set in Africa but featuring Eastern European extras in blackface) gets the film off to a bad start, while the writers eventually abandon the enticing Indiana Jones meets 007 set-up in favour of repetitive scenes of slapstick & farce.
- 6/10
- DirectorKiyoshi KurosawaStarsHidetoshi NishijimaYûko TakeuchiToru BabaTakakura is a former detective. He receives a request from his ex-colleague, Nogami, to examine a missing family case that occurred six years earlier. Takakura follows Saki's memory. She is the only surviving family member from the case. Meanwhile, Takakura and his wife Yasuko recently moved into a new home. Their neighbor, Nishino, has a sick wife and a young teen daughter. One day, the daughter, Mio, tells him that the man is not her father and she doesn't know him at all.In Shyamalan's Split we had a psychological thriller that became a supernatural one. This seems the opposite. Early scenes hint at something paranormal - the rustling wind, the isolation, the old dark house - before crossing back into the reality of the police procedural. Like Split it's also a film preoccupied with the Nietzschean concepts of power & destruction; with broken minds. A bizarre but unforgettable work.
- 9/10
- DirectorMilos FormanStarsJan VostrcilJosef SebánekJosef ValnohaA volunteer fire department throws a party for their former boss with the whole town invited, but nothing goes as planned.
- 10/10
- DirectorAndrzej ZulawskiStarsSabine AzémaJean-François BalmerJonathan GenetA young man, hoping to write a novel, visits a French guest-house with a friend, he but finds himself distracted by a strange mystery and the stranger inhabitants of the home.
- 10/10
- DirectorWes CravenStarsMaren JensenSharon StoneSusan BucknerAfter her husband dies under mysterious circumstances, a widow becomes increasingly paranoid of the neighboring religious community that may have diabolical plans for her.Compromised by studio interference; its heroines styled & posed like lingerie models; its ending, laden with special effects & supernatural threat, at odds with the film's sombre, more psychological tone. But it still works. The characters are appealing; the set-pieces tense & inventive. Craven makes good use of his isolated setting & there's a strong narrative through-line about outsiders; people shamed & displaced.
- 7/10
- DirectorMike LeighStarsTimothy SpallPaul JessonDorothy AtkinsonAn exploration of the last quarter century of the great, if eccentric, British painter J.M.W. Turner's life.Leigh gives us a portrait of Turner in miniature. A series of scenes, vignettes, fractured & fragmented; presented without context. These small close-up details of a life eventually collate; they create a broader picture when seen in totality. It works, at least intellectually; but the film doesn't live! Spall's grunting, snorting caricature of Turner is impenetrable; a blank canvas. More a sketch than a masterpiece.
- 5/10
- DirectorJennifer KentStarsEssie DavisNoah WisemanDaniel HenshallA single mother and her child fall into a deep well of paranoia when an eerie children's book titled "Mister Babadook" manifests in their home.Kent blends Shyamalanian domestic terror with something closer to Michael Haneke or Lars von Trier. The result is punishing; a brutal psychological drama disguised as supernatural mystery. Davis, so raw & compelling, holds the film together, but the stylisation is interesting as well, with the monochromatic colours & minimalist design suggesting a genre variant on Haneke's similarly suffocating The Seventh Continent.
- 9/10