In French. 79 minute running time. A story about degenerate gamblers… it wasn’t terrible, but it also wasn’t very good. What could be worse than playing roulette on the French Riviera, just depressing… Jeanne Moreau has a beautiful mouth but otherwise looked oldz… you can give this one a miss.
Gambled away her little boy…
94 minute running time … the story of Morris Berg, who was a pro baseball player who became a WWII spy … Jewish (non-practicing), handsome, homosexual? (bisexual?), brilliant and not just at throwing a ball from home plate to second base … it wasn’t terrible but I guess in the end the story was sort of underwhelming though they did bring in fog machines and wet down all those city streets … lots of smoking and fedoras … Paul Rudd can learn long strings of foreign language dialogue apparently. This had a lot of A-list actors and must have had a pretty sizable budget… I bet they lost money on it. Rex called it “a juicy true story told blandly .... [with] Sluggish, follow-the-dots direction.”
Post-coital 1940s cigarette
In French. 102 minute running time. Black and white. Heist movie. I wasn’t super thrilled, but it was interesting to see that the chemin de fer scene probably inspired the casino scene in the James Bond movie, Dr. No. There’s also a safe cracking scene using a stethoscope, which made me laugh. High Rolling Bob was a Silver Fox, a tough guy with a soft spot, yada yada … I like the loose morals in these French movies, maybe why they were shocking or popular in 1956 America, assuming you could see it.
No kiddie slaps in French cinema
Sarah Jarosz sings “Morning” … I dig it:
110 minute running time so at least 20 minutes too long … I wasn’t in the mood for this, and I don’t think it would have been very good even if I had been … pointless violence … Malkovich once again as psychopathic killer … Ray Winstone plays Ray Winstone … I was attracted to both of the lead actresses (Lena Headey and Chiara Caselli), but overall I wasn’t thrilled, you can give this one a miss.
Harpsichordist wife
In French. 90 minute running time. I made it about 25 minutes in before quitting, I hated this… only thing interesting was Jean Seberg and her haircut … I can’t stand Godard or any of the French New Wave crap … it’s just garbage … it was terrible then and it’s terrible now. Farr says: “One of the more fascinating and important works in all cinema,'“ but I say spare me…
You make me wanna puke….
101 minute running time … Hitchcock movie based on a Patricia Highsmith story, script by Raymond Chandler … this movie was a winner, a green-go recommended movie … what interested me most was the sexual innuendo and imagery throughout, very risque for 1951 I thought … Farley Granger’s wife says she should have eaten a hot dog first to satisfy her cravings before sucking and licking her soft ice cream cone … Barbara, Ruth Roman’s little sister, distracts the detective by tossing her face powder on his crotch then kneels before him to clean it up, then assumes the doggy position to see him off … these things all made me laugh, Hitchcock was a really horny old bastard for sure. And it is hinted that the villain played by Robert Walker is a homosexual, you know, a sexual deviant … Ruth Roman is absolutely gorgeous, I wondered if she had some Persian or Italian blood, but it turns out that she was a Lithuanian Jew. See this movie for sure if you haven’t already…
Craving hot dogs
Assuming the Position I
Assuming the Position II
Here are my brief stream of consciousness bullet points on episode three (SPOILERS), where the Muldoon family is fleshed out a little:
Harry tails grandma Muldoon the mainland (all filmed in Nova Scotia, not Maine)
She’s taking brown envelopes from guys on construction sites
We meet Percy’s mother, again no Maine accent, teenage mom abandoned baby, has decent second life, “Grandma Muldoon is a tyrant”
Bowdoin College name-checked
We meet Percy’s coke snorting roommate from Portland, chunky, cue Pacino, “cuz she got a BIG ASS”
Are there nightclubs in Portland where kids snort coke on the bar? I doubt it
More mysterious objects arranged artfully in the woods
Bill gets Sonya to come with him to Grandma Muldoon’s
Dinner is pretty weird and awful, two Muldoon brothers don’t get along
Sean was Percy’s teenage Dad
Sean hurt his shoulder working the boats, that’s why he crushes and snorts 600 milligrams of Oxy a day
Show closes with homosexual mouth kiss on the beach, I’m praying they don’t become characters on the show
Whose body is that floating there? You guessed it: not Percy
But tune in next week!
Manager at the Gap, can afford cocaine
There’s a lot of bad, bad movies on their list, but it’s still worth looking at chronologically. Only a handful of these movies make my Top 500 list, let alone the Top 100:
Sherlock Jr 1924
Battleship Potemkin 1925
The General 1926
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans 1927
The Passion of Joan of Arc 1927
Metropolis 1927
Man with a Movie Camera 1929
City Lights 1931
M 1931
L'atalante 1934
Modern Times 1936
La Regle du jeu 1939
Citizen Kane 1941
Casablanca 1942
Meshes of the Afternoon 1943
A Matter of Life and Death 1946
Bicycle Thieves 1948
The Red Shoes 1948
Late Spring 1949
The Third Man 1949
Rashomon 1950
Singin' in the Rain 1951
Tokyo Story 1953
Ugetsu Monogatari 1953
Madame de 1953
Seven Samurai 1954
Rear Window 1954
Journey to Italy 1954
The Night of the Hunter 1955
Pather Panchali 1955
Ordet 1955
The Searchers 1956
A Man Escaped 1956
Vertigo 1958
Some Like It Hot 1959
North by Northwest 1959
The 400 Blows 1959
Imitation of Life 1959
Psycho 1960
A bout de souffle 1960
The Apartment 1960
La dolce vita 1960
L'avventura 1960
Cleo from 5 to 7 1962
La Jetee 1962
8 1/2 1963
Le Mepris 1963
The Leopard 1963
Pierrot le fou 1965
Black Girl 1965
Persona 1966
Au hasard Balthazar 1966
Daisies 1966
The Battle of Algiers 1966
Andrei Rublev 1966
Playtime 1967
2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
Once Upon a Time in the West 1968
Wanda 1970
The Godfather 1972
Touki Bouki 1973
The Spirit of the Beehive 1973
Fear Eats the Soul 1974
Celine and Julie Go Boating 1974
Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 1975
Mirror 1975
Barry Lyndon 1975
Taxi Driver 1976
News from Home 1976
Killer of Sheep 1977
Apocalypse Now 1979
Stalker 1979
The Shining 1980
Blade Runner 1982
Sans Soleil 1982
Shoah 1985
Blue Velvet 1986
My Neighbour Totoro 1988
Histoire(s) de Cinema 1988
Close-up 1989
Do the Right Thing 1989
GoodFellas 1990
Daughters of the Dust 1991
A Brighter Summer Day 1991
The Piano 1992
Satantango 1994
Chungking Express 1994
Beau Travail 1998
Yi Yi 1999
In the Mood for Love 2000
The Gleaners and I 2000
Mulholland Drive 2001
Spirited Away 2001
Tropical Malady 2004
Moonlight 2016
Get Out 2017
Portrait of a Lady on Fire 2019
Parasite 2019
Here are my brief stream of consciousness bullet points on episode two (SPOILERS), where the Lam family is fleshed out a little:
CJ Lam, actor is 39 years old but is playing 20 year old? Doesn’t quite fly
How many Hong Kong Chinese are working as lobstermen in Maine? I would guess exactly ZERO…
This whole Chinese angle to the show may be more check box ticking to be more “inclusive” even though it makes no sense
The Lams do speak Cantonese, but also perfect unaccented English
CJ is sniffing white powder, cocaine I suppose?
Bill goes back to visit tiny skinhead zombie, “Diez,” who is local drug dealer
Jewish hippie chick was screwing CJ Lam, but she’s always high and asks him to hurt her which he thinks is ewwww gross
Bill runs into naked old witch at backyard barbecue, so it was another old lady, not grandma Muldoon
CJ pumping iron (10 lb barbells) in his attic, getting ready for next fight with Muldoon boys
Fails though as Muldoon boys rough him up (not the face, just some artful scratches) and break an arm
Weird Boomer stuff as Bill and Sonya discuss suicide and Sonya goes and stands on cliff ledge, unfortunately Bill doesn’t push her off
Shirtless CJ in bed with hippie chick, but she got him hooked on white powder so that’s not good
You used me! (and then stopped, alas)
