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)
I loved the first season of The Sinner and tolerated seasons two and three, so I’ve just started on season four and here are my brief stream of consciousness bullet points on episode one (SPOILERS):
Bill Pullman still squinting and wincing full time, that’s called acting
PTSD panic attacks from previous seasons
Sonya has fat black buddy on island in Maine?!? Makes no sense but they’re ticking boxes
“Greta,” whom we later learn is a lesbian in addition to being fat and black (tick another box), has a million dollar house despite being a “broke artist” … don’t worry, we never see her again
Chinese invasion angle, threatening Maine lobster operations, again makes no sense
Bill off his anti-depressant zombie meds so the panic attacks are pretty bad
Angular faced Jewish hippie chick from Orange is the New Black appears (I couldn’t stand that show), she is 32 years old
Very awkward old folks sex scene (Bill Pullman is 68 and Jessica Hecht is 57!!) … That Ship Has Sailed, I don’t care that she’s on top, and what’s with the choking, egad
Going to heavy blue camera filter for anti-depressant withdrawal dream? sequence scenes
Ineffectual, slouching country sheriff, needs Big City Bill’s help
Crusty old angular face grandma, “she could get ya back to port in any storm!”
Why do none of these people have Maine accents?
Tokens left near suicide jump site, an air of mystery
Local dive bar has hottie singer with giant mouth (Jessica Marie Brown)
Neo-Nazi homesteader with neck tats looks like zombie, sort of collapses out of camper trailer but remains standing, an air of danger. “I likes just me and da posums out here in da quiet!”
NONE of the Muldoons sound like they are from Maine
Unabomber hoodie captured on CCTV footage
Bill explores weird wailing and moaning he hears from million dollar porch, Blue Filter alert
Oh my god, it’s a coven of naked witches! Led by Grandma Muldoon?!?
Tune in for episode two!
Find me, Bill!
108 minute running time … early 1940s Hitchcock … it’s a good one, green-go for sure … Joseph Cotten has some real menace and there’s some fun dialogue. The line “Horrible, faded, fat, greedy women" must have really appealed to Hitch. See this one if you haven’t.
Do you know if you ripped the fronts off houses, Charlie, you'd find swine ?
In French. 118 minute running time so a little overly long, I could probably cut out a few minutes, but this is a great movie, absolutely a must-see, green-go. I’ve seen it before awhile ago so this was a re-watch and it was as good as I remembered it. There was a Hollywood re-make of this movie, which was a terrible thing to do given the greatness of the original, don’t see that one. Class envy and psychopathy a bad combo, I loved every minute of it.
Sunstroke
91 minute running time … Marlene Dietrich’s debut in America, Josef von Sternberg directing … I was surprised by the bawdy jokes and risque sexual humor throughout this movie… I guess in 1930 the production codes weren’t really enforced … this was made the same year as The Blue Angel, which is a much better movie, but this was interesting and I didn’t hate it … Gary Cooper plays the Foreign Legionnaire who is screwing all the women in town, including Marlene … I don’t think I’ll give it a green-go, but if you like early talkies, you should check it out.
May I keep this?
79 minute running time … Columbia noir, kind of a dumb story but I liked Aldo Ray’s broad back, blonde hair, and weirdly high voice … best part about this was Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Robinson) who played the femme fatale and she could smoke like a champ … did she die of emphysema? If you’re a noir fan, you should see it, but as I said, it really isn’t very good, though it clearly inspired the Coen Brothers.
Guys have been swarming around you ever since your second teeth came through…
