Movies I watched in September
Paddington (2014 - P. King)
The Day of the Jackal (1973 - F. Zinnemann)
The Great Buck Howard (2008 - S. McGinly)
Victoria (2015 - S. Schipper)
Uptown Saturday Night (1974 - S. Poitier)
La Bamba (1987 - L. Valdez)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942 - O. Welles)
Danger: Diabolik (1968 - M. Bava)
Sergeant Rutledge (1960 - J. Ford)
Hardcore (1979 - P. Schrader)
Repulsion (1965 - R. Polanski)
Pretty Baby (1978 - L. Malle)
Hard Times (1975 - W. Hill)
Winning Time (2022-23 Series)
Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022 - G. Miller)
Snake and Mongoose (2013 - W. Holloway)
Game Night (2018 - J. F. Daley & J. Goldstein)
Singles (1992 - C. Crowe)
Alphabet City (1984 - A. Poe)
Urban Cowboy (1980 - J. Bridges)
Get Out (2017 - J. Peele)
Auto Focus (2022 - P. Schrader)
Citizens Band (1977 - J. Demme)
Overhaul (2023 - T. Portella)
Monthly dump of movies that seemed like a good idea to watch for some reason. Big month with 23 movies and one series.I need to get a life.
Paddington was an absolutely beautiful love letter to London.
The Day of the Jackal managed to create high suspense in spite of a foregone conclusion (DeGaulle obviously survived) and very little action.
The Great Buck Howard was a silly comedy but worth watching just for John Malkovich’s committed performance as a show biz mentalist based on the Amazing Kreskin. I’ve raved about
Victoria upthread but it was one of the best movies I’ve seen recently (well that and Paddington
)
Uptown Saturday Night was pretty dumb but drew a few laughs from some over the top performances from its terrific cast. I’d never seen
La Bamba but watched it as part of my Los Lobos prep for the MAD 31 countdown. It was a pretty standard musical biopic that did what it could with a lead character who wasn’t that interesting.
The Magnificent Ambersons was my only movie this month that was older than me. There’s probably a much better film among the footage destroyed by the studio but what’s left is a weird mix of melodramatic acting and indulgent tracking shots.
Danger: Diabolik was an entertaining Italian spy movie with swinging 60’s style.
Sergeant Rutledge was a late-period John Ford Western I’d never seen. It’s mostly a courtroom drama which reveals itself via flashbacks. I didn’t love it but respected the effort and its early 60s wokeness.
I probably belong on a watchlist after watching
Hardcore, Repulsion and Pretty Baby back to back
. Hardcore is Paul Schrader’s take on the 70s porn industry. George C. Scott’s Calvinist protagonist makes a sudden character turn that’s not entirely convincing but ihs performance is powerful. I also watched another Schrader film
Autofocus later in the month. It’s another movie obsessed with sex and morality centered on the life and murder of Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane. I couldn’t buy Greg Kinnear’s mugging portrayal of Crane but the movie was interesting in a sleazy sort of way. Polanski’s
Repulsion is still very unsettling over 50 years later. I didn’t think the way he presented Catherine Deneuve’s breakdown was that misogynistic but it’s hard to separate the artist and his art.
Pretty Baby was another movie that I didn’t think was exploitative as its reputation would suggest but maybe that’s just because it’s naturalistic and very slow.
Hard Times was a great Walter Hill film about bare knuckle street fighters during the Great Depression. Charles Bronson and James Coburn were perfectly cast as the boxer and his grifting promoter.
Three Thousand Years of Longing had beautiful art direction but I didn’t connect with the genie tale.
Game Night was contrived but fun–the many plot twists didn’t make sense but they happened quickly enough to keep the audience from noticing too much.
Singles still holds up as an offbeat 90s romcom and as a document of the brief time where Seattle was the center of the universe.
Alphabet City was the first commercial film directed by Punk filmmaker Amos Poe who made his reputation shooting the CBGB bands. It had some beautiful night time shots of early 80s NYC but the plot made no sense whatsoever. I hadn’t seen
Urban Cowboy since its original theatrical run. I didn’t like it much at all because of all the mechanical bull nonsense but I’d have loved to seen a better story about the Travolta and Winger characters.
I got suckered into watching
Get Out because it was expiring on one network only to reappear somewhere else this month. I’m glad I finally got around to watching it even though I knew the twist going in. Excellent film. The novelty draft sent me to watch
Citizens Band, Jonathan Demme’s breakout film about the CB radio craze. The script was loaded of interesting comic characters who were randomly connected via CB. Finally there was Brazilian heist/truck racing movie
Overhaul that was a wasted two hours of my life.
Critters. Loved this one and Ghoulies back in the day.
I think I was confusing The Fly 2 with Pet Sematary 2.
