Movies Watched -- Old Enough (1984)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

92 minute running time … not sure why it was in my queue, not a John Farr reco … anyway, the story of a rich 12-yo WASP girl in Manhattan who one summer makes friends with a working-class Italian Catholic girl … it’s sort of a culture clash / coming of age movie … what interested me is that it was made by a Jewish woman (a low-budget movie underwritten by her father?), and the story must be semi-autobiographical, but she made the star a WASP, which is odd. I wasn’t thrilled with it, and the terrible electronic music score (made in the early 1980s) is unbearable.

[Smack!] And that goes for your friend, too.

[Smack!] And that goes for your friend, too.

Too Much To Carry Alone

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Thought they were black at first, but no, The Teskey Brothers are a bunch of white boys … good stuff, I dig it:

Movies Watched -- Swoon (1992)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

90 minute running time, but I didn’t make it too far in … the horrific true story of Jewish homosexual lovers who kidnapped and murdered a child in 1920s Chicago (ya know, Leopold and Loeb) … I was not in the mood for this, esp. the artsy fartsy style in which it was made … I thought this was a John Farr reco (“a crucial work of new queer cinema [no caps],” said Dick Brody), but shockingly it isn’t. I don’t know how it got in my queue.

Babe and Dickie

Babe and Dickie

GSP Ozu

Added on by C. Maoxian.

I like a lot of stuff Gotts Street Park puts out … Ozu transported me back to the days when I would spend a lot of wee hours in expensive hotel bars with beautiful women, which was not that long ago, but feels like a lifetime ago:

Movies Watched -- Caché (2005)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

In French. 118 minute running time so at least 20 to 30 minutes too long … I loved Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon so I thought I’d try another of his movies, but this was no good and it’s certainly not a “thriller” … I didn’t know about the Paris massacre of 1961 … but I don’t know why the guy wouldn’t straight-up tell his beautiful wife (Juliette Binoche) the truth about his past … why would he feel that guilty about it?!? I did like the video-in-a-video gimmick where you couldn’t tell if you were watching reality or a taped version, you know, toying with the audience… with the final long shot the ultimate gimmick.

Andrew Sarris got it right when he wrote: “Too much of the plot's machinery turns out to be a metaphorical mechanism by which to pin the tail of colonial guilt on Georges and the rest of us smug bourgeois donkeys.”

One day he was gone, and I was glad.

One day he was gone, and I was glad.

Movies Watched -- The Onion Field (1979)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

126 minute running time but felt like an eternity, could easily cut at least a half hour out if not much more … I loved Joseph Wambaugh’s The Choirboys when I read it 30 years ago, and I may have read The Onion Field and forgotten about it. James Woods plays a good creepy idiot psychopath in this, but the movie is no good, it just doesn’t work, the pacing is no good…. This was a John Farr reco, but I say give it a miss.

We’re sort of a family here

We’re sort of a family here