I will try to see it.

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Old People on a beach start aging rapidly.

Damn, this was a really really bad movie. Turned it off about half way through.

I admit I got hooked by the concept for this one, but wish I would have given up halfway through too. Man this was a terrible waste of time.

Barbie was mostly meh. Lots of pastels and maybe three good jokes. And a story that doesn't quite make sense.

Hal Hartley's 2nd feature, 1990's Trust. Not quite as great as The Unbelievable Truth, but getting more mature in theme. Adrienne Shelly, Martin Donovan, and a young Edie Falco.

Like Jarmush, Hartley has the ability to fascinate with character and not much narrative thrust.

God, Shelly was luminous.

One thing I forgot to mention about the unbelievable truth, is there's a scene with Robert John Burke and Edie Falco where they are sitting in a diner booth and then do the scene three times. Meaning, they run the dialogue three times without stopping. Doing it in a slightly different way each time. Doesn't sound like a big deal now, but back in the '80s when I first saw this and I was discovering the independent film movement that was going on then, it was like an electric shock to my system. I didn't know that movies could do something like that. It was an amazing time, you had Hal Hartly, Spike Lee, Steven Soderberg, Susan Seidelman, Jim Jarmusch, and so many more.

I watched Trust the other night, and I think I picked up on one of Hartley's influences. In Bresson's A Man Escaped, a man is imprisoned and works on escaping. Near the end of the film, another inmate is put in the cell with him. Is he a plant? Or can he be trusted?

Trust asks those same questions. How can we trust others and how can they trust us? Martin Donovan's performance reminds me of those non-perfomances in Bresson's films, and he is great at showing a sort of restrained anger throughout much of the film. In essence, though, he's a character with a moral center, a trusting soul.

I'm looking forward to watching the rest of that Long Island Trilogy.

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Past Lives - excellent drama about Korean childhood friends who lose contact when the girl moves to the US and reconnect many years later. Lots to think about re life 's plans vs reality while being sweet and not heavy-handed.

Cool! His first two films, Unbelievable Truth and Trust are quite...low tech and almost amateurish...but in a good way. Simple Men is, in my mind, his best film and one I revisit a lot. His later films that are worth watching include: Faye Grim, Henry Fool, No Such Thing, Flirt, and Amateur. His filmmaking prowess gets better with each movie.

The Bresson comparison is interesting...I see a lot of French New Wave in Hartley's work.

I wonder if this may be a genre of Korean film. I was thinking that Fukuoka sounds similar, except the guy goes to Japan.

Watch this last night and it was great.

A Haunting in Venice - a well executed, enjoyable Poirot story. Michelle Yeoh's clearly having fun. Branagh may well have a full-on horror movie in him, as he's good at creating a haunting atmosphere and the jump scares.

Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello, 2019)

Based on the novel by Jack London. This was really, really good. Beautifully shot on 16mm interspersed with archival footage, and with a great central performance by Luca Marinelli. Somewhat experimental but very accessible and engaging, highly recommended.


re hartley agree that Amateur is well worth checking out. Also got around to watching Decision to Leave after posts here, liked it a lot

Decision To Leave has really stayed with me...just an amazing film.

Tonight I watched Nicholas Roeg's Walkabout for the first time in about 40 years. Stunningly beautiful and stunningly tragic at the same time. The story is simple enough. A boy, about six years old, and his sister, around seventeen, are stranded in the Outback (how they become stranded is both simple and mysterious). They have no idea where they are going, but meet an Aboriginal boy on his walkabout who speaks no English. The film doesn't bother to translate his words, leaving us in much the same position as the lost brother and sister.

Roeg's filmmaking is stellar, in particular the crosscutting within scenes. In one scene the young boy tells a story to the Aboriginal boy, and Roeg intercuts pages, perhaps from a novel, as the boy tells his story.

There are so many ideas floating through the film: contrasts between the city and the country, the "civilized" and the "uncivilized," the industrial and the natural. But essentially Walkabout is an initiation story for the girl, played by Jenny Agutter and the Aboriginal boy, played by David Gulpilil who is memorable in Peter Weir's The Last Wave. Almost every initiation story involves a journey and the way we remember those journeys. Walkabout is no exception.

Pay attention to the A.E. Housman poem that ends the film:

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.



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One of my favorite movies, John. It's just so amazing. Especially love the opening montage of sounds and visuals.

Walkabout... new on Criterion.


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"Coming Soon: Dicks: The Musical"

Saw this movie tonight. I think he does have a horror film in him but if he wants to do another thriller after this effort then by all means. I thought the movie was well executed too.

Dead Again is sort of a horror/thriller, isn't it?

Finished my rewatch of Hal Hartley's Long Island Trilogy with a screening of 1992's Simple Men, this time with my GF watching as well.

It's interesting, I always thought this one was his best film of the 3, but I hadn't seen them in decades. I really only remembered the ending and that it moved me. But I now think Simple Men is the weakest of the three. It's still entertaining, and one that I laugh a lot through. I am adamant that these movies are actually dry comedies, even though I'm in the minority.

My GF HATED it lol. She compared it to The Room! It sparked a discussion on the difference between "East Coast" (where I'm from) and Pacific Northwest" art, where she's from. She claims that PNW art is more sincere and straightforward, like Raymond Carver, while East Coast art is more about style and surface pretension. I see her point, but I love the artifice of Hal Hartley anyway lol.

the movie stars Robert John Burke, Bill Sage, Karen Sillas, and Martin Donovan. It was the debut film of actress Holly Marie Combs, in a supporting role. It was entered into the 1992 Cannes Film Festival.

John, there's a little call back to Anna Karina's famous dance in Vivre Sa Vie...in place of Karina, we have the weirdyl beautiful Elina Löwensohn (you might remember her from Nadja)...this time, to Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing":

Turned on TV last night, saw Get Shorty was about to start on HDNet Movies. Prior, they showed a screen that said the role of Chili Palmer was written for, and offered to, Dustin Hoffman.

He turned it down, but I can't see it. He doesn't seem like the right person for that role. Been trying to imagine the film with him, can't wrap my head around it.

I thought I had read that the Danny DeVito movie star role is supposed to be a laugh at Dustin Hoffman....

I've read this same thing from multiple sources, including, I think, Elmore Leonard.

That's right, Leonard wrote the book after a project with Hoffman didn't get off the ground.

The novel was written at a time when Leonard was at the very top of his game.

I have been writing a review of Get Shorty for 10-15 years but can't seem to find the perfect key that unlocks it. There is just too much there. I drag it out once a year and rewrite it. I've watched this flick countless times and have read everything I can find on it that comes from the principals, and will add that Travolta is absolutely perfect as Chili Palmer. He was just coming off his resurgence in Pulp Fiction and used that momentum to just nail the part. Anybody else wouldn't have been as good.

In fact, the whole cast is perfect, especially the guy who never seems to get mentioned, Delroy Lindo playing Bo Catlett. Killing off Bo was a big mistake. They should have rewritten the ending once they watched Lindo's performance.