Movies

[Rusty]

318 - Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) - 6.5/10 - The film started out very well with Julie reading on a park bench and then seeing Céline go by dropping items along the way. The chase scene was fun. Unfortunately, that was the highlight of the film for me along with a few other scenes (such as the library) early in the film. It eventually became much less interesting and I didn't really care about the mystery in the mansion at all.


319 - The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) - 8/10 - A good historical drama about poor tenant farming families in Italy toward the end of the 19th Century. There isn't really a powerful story here, but it is more in the experience of everyday life.


320 - La Terra Trema (1948) - 7.5/10 - A Sicilian family of fishermen try to improve their fortunes, but things don't go well in this Italian neorealist film. It was pretty good.

[Rusty]

321 - La Belle Noiseuse (1991) - 7/10 - A young artist takes his girlfriend to visit a well known, but older artist who hasn't painted for some time. The artist is convince to try and finish a long abandoned piece that could be his masterwork using the girlfriend (Emmanuelle Béart) as the model. There are a number of long shots with the artist sketching or painting and that gets a bit old. The film is also nearly 4 hours in length which is a deterrent. I still found it somewhat interesting, though.

[Rusty]

322 - Shadows (1958) - 5/10 - A white man gets into a relationship with a woman named Leila, not realizing that she is a light skinned black woman and not white like himself. He gets cold feet when he finds out. I thought the acting wasn't that great and the story was pretty dull.


323 - The Long Day Closes (1992) - 7.5/10 - A British schoolboy in the 1950s spends a lot of time at the local cinema. He is bullied at school and has no real friends. It evokes the era pretty well. The soundtrack is very nice. I think that I might grow to like this more if I rewatch it again someday.


324 - Guernsey (2005) - 4.5/10 - This was a pretty dull movie. There were lots of scenes with little to no dialogue or action. There also wasn't much of a discernible plot.


325 - Only Clouds Move the Stars (1998) - 8/10 - A young girl has to cope with losing her little brother to cancer and having her mother sink into depression and essentially abandon the family. An energetic boy that she meets helps bring her out of her gloom, at least for a while.


326 - Frida - Straight from the Heart (1991) - 7/10 - A 13 year old girl tries to improve her mother's love life, but has love issues of her own. It's a decent coming of age film.


327 - News from Home (1977) - 7/10 - I thought this was pretty boring at first, but started to get into it more as it went along and was enjoying it by the end. My first visit to New York City wasn't long after this film came out. My family visited the city for the Major League Baseball All Star Game during the summer of 1977 so seeing all of the footage of the city from that time period was cool. I even started getting into the letters from her mother, wondering when she would get her next $20 in the mail.

[Rusty]

328 - Gimme Shelter (1970) - 8/10 - This documentary about the free concert that The Rolling Stones put on in San Francisco on December 6, 1969 is pretty interesting. The concert footage is pretty cool and we get some video from the Madison Square Garden concert, too. The behind the scenes footage is maybe even more interesting. I saw The Rolling Stones in concert in the mid-2000s and they put on a good show. Fortunately nobody died at that one.


329 - Salesman (1969) - 6/10 - Life on the road isn't easy for these Bible salesmen in the midwest. I didn't find this particular documentary to be all that interesting.


330 - Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023) - 7.5/10 - Not as good as the first movie, but still a solid follow up. Team Shazam has to take on the daughters of Atlas.


331 - Every Man for Himself (1980) - 5/10 - An odd film about the sexual lives and interests of several people. It wasn't very good.


332 - The Quince Tree Sun (1992) - 5/10 - An artist paints a picture of a quince tree in his yard while construction goes on in his home.


333 - Touki Bouki (1973) - 6.5/10 - A Senegalese couple try to make it to France. Overall, it was okay.

[Rusty]

334 - Colossal Youth (2006) - 5/10 - After his home is destroyed, a man wanders around the city and talks to various people. It seemed pretty lifeless and wasn't my thing.


335 - Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) - 7.5/10 - The film moves through the lives of a family during the 1940s and 1950s as if moving through memories. It isn't told in a linear fashion and there isn't a distinct narrative, though we do have a death and a wedding. It's more impressionistic with lots of singing throughout. The family definitely has its problems, generally centered on a mercurial father and his occasionally violent ways.


336 - WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) - 3/10 - Part documentary, part fiction, very strange.


337 - Grey Gardens (1975) - 7/10 - This documentary takes us into the lives of an eccentric mother/daughter duo who have lived in a Long Island mansion for the past 50 years, but have very little money and the estate isn't in great condition. Cats are everywhere and raccoons have free rein in the attic. They are interesting characters and not just because they are the aunt and first cousin of Jackie Kennedy. The daughter seemed more out there than the mother.


338 - French Cancan (1955) - 7/10 - Jean Gabin stars as a man who puts on shows in this fictional origin of the Moulin Rouge. The story itself wasn't really all that great, though it was adequate, but the film is colorful and generally lively so it is still fairly entertaining.

[Rusty]

339 - Love Me Tonight (1932) - 7.5/10 - I'm not generally much of a Maurice Chevalier fan, but I did enjoy this one where he stars as a tailor who pretends to be a Baron in order to collect a debt from a poor aristocrat. Meanwhile, a princess (Jeanette MacDonald) falls in love with him. The songs were good and there was a fair amount of humor during the film.

[Rusty]

340 - Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) - 7/10 - After the Bay of Pigs, a man chooses to stay behind in Cuba while his wife and other family/friends head north to the U.S.


341 - The Scarlet Empress (1934) - 7/10 - Marlene Dietrich stars as Catherine the Great from the time of her marriage through the time of her ascension to the throne of Russia. The set design was pretty good, though the story was hit or miss for me.


342 - Vive L'Amour (1994) - 6/10 - The film has very little dialogue and centers around a female realtor and two men who find their way into an apartment that is among her listings. There are things that I like about the film and I liked it a lot more than The River, but overall I didn't enjoy it a lot. It did seem to get the feelings of loneliness across fairly well.

[Rusty]

343 - Edvard Munch (1974) - 7.5/10 - A nicely done documentary style biopic about the well known painter. I liked the film, though with its length and tone it could feel repetitive at times even if they were covering a different part of his life. I might have enjoyed it even more if I had watched it over several days like the mini series it was originally.


344 - A City of Sadness (1989) - 7.5/10 - The period after WWII ends and Taiwan was no longer under Japanese authority was a rough one for people on the island. The effects on one family are shown here over a period of years. It's a nice historical drama.


345 - Kings of the Road (1976) - 7/10 - A man who drives around to various theater to repair their projectors and other equipment sees a man drive his car into a lake. He then gives the man a ride and takes him along his route. It took me a little while to get into this one, though I did end up enjoying it, and not just for the scene with their antics while a group of schoolchildren were waiting for a show. I enjoyed Alice in the Cities quite a bit more.


346 - The Puppetmaster (1993) - 6.5/10 - This biopic centers on Taiwanese puppeteer Li Tienlu through the end of WWII. It was interesting to have Li Tienlu himself narrate and appear in the film as well. it's not bad, but overall I found this one much less interesting than A City of Sadness, perhaps in part due to my lack of interest in puppets and opera.

[Rusty]

347 - Uncle Moses (1932) - 5.5/10 - Uncle Moses runs a sweatshop that is filled with Jewish immigrant workers. Moses is a powerful figure in his part of the world. He takes a liking to the daughter of one of his employees and tries to stave off unionizing efforts at his shop. Moses doesn't seem like too bad a person as portrayed here, but some of those around him are greedy. The film is mostly in Yiddish with English subtitles.


348 - Rosetta (1999) - 7.5/10 - Rosetta is a teenager who lives with her alcoholic mother in a trailer. She is desperate to get a job and improve her situation, but she finds that keeping jobs is difficult through no fault of her own and collecting unemployment isn't possible either. Émilie Dequenne does a nice job as Rosetta, though I didn't think the rest of the cast was as interesting.

[Rusty]

349 - The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) - 7/10 - Lazarescu is in his 60s and lives alone in an apartment with three cats. He is having severe pain in his stomach along with headaches, but the ambulance hasn't come so he seeks help from his neighbors. When the ambulance does arrive, he embarks on a seemingly endless trip to hospital after hospital where uncaring doctors and nurses either dismiss his issues as a result of drink and not taking care of himself or just don't want to deal with him so they send him on his way. A caring paramedic stays by his side the whole way.

[Rusty]

350 - Tetris (2023) - 7.5/10 - This tells the story of how Tetris was licensed from the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and became a worldwide hit. There's plenty of intrigue (and embellishment I'm sure) in a fairly entertaining film. Taron Egarton plays Henk Rogers, the man who licenses the game and makes a deal with Nintendo only to later find that there are problems with the license itself.

[Rusty]

351 - Mother (2009) - 7.5/10 - Do-Joon is an adult with an intellectual disability. He lives with his mother and hangs out with a friend that she doesn't like. When Do-Joon is arrested in connection to the death of a teenage girl, his mother sets out to prove his innocence. This is pretty well acted and I enjoyed it, though it didn't quite rise to the level that I was hoping.


352 - The Woman Who Ran (2020) - 6/10 - A woman visits old friends with lots of sitting around having conversations. I thought it was somewhat interesting at first, but soon got bored with the film. I still liked it more than the other three Sang-soo films that I've seen. Maybe it just needed more robber cats.

[Rusty]

353 - Nobody's Daughter Haewon (2013) - 6.5/10 - Haewon is depressed that her mother is emigrating to Canada. She meets up with her secret lover, a film director, plus a number of friends. She also has a few dreams mixed into the story. I liked this a bit more than The Woman Who Ran.

[Rusty]

354 - Burning (2018) - 7/10 - Jong-su is a young man who wants to be a writer, but at the moment is getting by with odd jobs and deliveries. He runs into Hae-mi, a girl that he knew as a child. She gets him to agree to feed her cat while she goes off to Africa for a vacation. The film has a fair amount of atmosphere, due in part to the music, but Jong-su is a pretty passive character most of the time and the film never really quite delivers on what it seems to be trying to build. I still liked it overall, but it had a lot more potential.

[Rusty]

355 - A Man Called Otto (2022) - 8/10 - Tom Hanks stars in this remake about a grumpy old man who is very set in his ways and thinks most people are idiots. Mariana Treviño is very good as Marisol and Hanks also does a nice job. I thought it was very well done and is perhaps the equal of the original, or at least close.