I've watched a lot of movies in the last month.

I've logged them all on Letterboxd, but here's a quick rundown with a few fresh comments.

2018 films
A Quiet Place
Avengers: Infinity Franchise
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Zoe
Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
Chris Rock: Tamborine

2018 has been a bummer so far, but I was pleasantly surprised by A Quiet Place and Solo. I liked how blatantly stupid the whiteboards were in AQP. I liked the stupid humor in Solo. Once I started thinking of Solo as a kid's movie, I realized how much I would have enjoyed it as a 10-year-old, and I just let myself enjoy it as a little kid.

I hated Avengers and its meaningless goofer-hero plodding. I couldn't watch all of Zoe. I jumped around in it and gave up on it. Nanette is overrated. It's preachy and not so funny. Some of Gadsby's narration of her own story is pretty powerful, but also misguided. Tamborine held up to a second watch. Rock is obviously in pain because of terrible decisions that he has made. Yet he's still funny. That said, he's the one who should probably quit comedy. It's obviously too late to save his marriage, but maybe it's not too late to save himself from continued celebrated celebrity depravity.

Films w/ DeNiro
Taxi Driver
The King of Comedy
Heat
Casino
Jackie Brown

Taxi Driver would make it into my Top 100 if I put together a new list. I'm convinced that this is the best work of Scorsese, Schrader, and DeNiro. There are aspects of it that I still find problematic, but these are also aspects of America that I still find problematic.

The rest of these films are fine. The King of Comedy is funny, but slight. The rest of these were re-watches. The King of Comedy was new to me. Heat is as bloated as ever, but remains interesting to watch. Casino struck me as an experiment in voiceover narration and propulsive skim-narrative. It's pretty shallow, like Las Vegas.

I'm still not in the "Jackie Brown is Tarantino's greatest film" camp, but this re-watch almost convinced me. Everyone in this seems like they're having fun. Besides Taxi Driver, I think that this is the best of the De Niro performances that I've watched recently. It's fun to think of him coming off of the bravado of Heat and Casino and signing on for this understated role.

Ozon films
Sitcom
Criminal Lovers

I'm listing these here out of respect. Ozon is talented. Sitcom is silly trash, but Criminal Lovers is a complex fable that would be worth wrestling with if it weren't so depraved. I'm pretty sure that that's probably how I'll feel about even the best of the rest of Ozon, so I'm done exploring his work. (The only reason that I watched these is because MUBI is having an Ozon series; my MUBI subscription is up for renewal at the end of August. I'm probably going to cancel since I don't watch enough and they are significantly raising the cost this year. If Filmstruck added offline viewing, I wouldn't even be considering MUBI any longer).

Watched on Filmstruck since the last post.

Shorts
Begone Dull Care
Captain Kidd's Kids
Just Neighbors
Bumpin' Into Broadway
Billy Blazes, Esq. (this is a new favorite)
Hairat
A Gentle Night
Call of Cuteness

Features
Taxi Driver
Singin' in the Rain
Withnail & I (one of my friend Mike's favorite films)

There are at least half a dozen other films that I logged on Letterboxd, but I'm not going to reproduce them here. I don't even have it in me to rant about Cronenberg's Shivers or Altman's Images or Mann's Thief. These all have their defenders. Meh. I guess I don't have anything to say. Blech.

Spring into Cinema

Something about the change in weather has me watching more films. While everyone else has crawled out from their Winter holes to enjoy the warm sun, I've felt the pull to escape from the sun into cold, dark, digital pictures.

Every few months I've tried Filmstruck again. In the past, I just couldn't get a good stream from them. Part of it was/is surely my slow country DSL connection, but mostly Filmstruck was just not ready for release. Any time I'd try to watch something, I'd get buffering a couple times a minute. It was impossible to watch anything that way. Anyhow, this time the streaming is working well with hardly any issues. I'm going to trust that the connection problems have been solved. I'm signing up for the full year plan, boys. A year of Filmstruck. If I only watch an average of one film a week, that comes out to about $2 a movie, which is about what I was paying for a VHS rental in the 90s, so I think that I can live with that.

What have I watched so far?

Shorts
The Acquaintances of a Lonely John (Safdie, 2008)
The Burden (von Bahr, 2017)
The Marathon (Goulding, 1919)
Old Man (Shore, 2012)
We're Going to the Zoo (Safdie, 2006)

Features
Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969)
The In-Laws (Hiller, 1979)
The Man on the Eiffel Tower (Meredith, 1949)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Donen, 1954)
Thirst (Bergman, 1949)

That's 5 shorts and 5 features in less than two weeks. There's no way that I'll keep up this pace, but I am really enjoying watching movies right now. Easy Rider was a re-watch. The rest were new to me. The Man on the Eiffel Tower was the best of the lot and the only one that I think would make any sort of Top list (that's why we watch movies right, to put them on lists?). I'm thinking of doing a Brandon-style march through 1949, then writing about it. I can't access Brandon's old blog, but I think he wrote about 1949 at one point.

Here's my old '49 list from a few years back:

1949

1. Colorado Territory (Raoul Walsh)
2. Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius)
3. The Set-Up (Robert Wise)
4. The Inspector General (Henry Koster)
5. Hellfire (R.G. Springsteen)
6. I Shot Jesse James (Samuel Fuller)
7.
8.
9. Border Incident (Anthony Mann)
10. Reign of Terror (Anthony Mann)

Mentions: A Run for Your Money (Charles Frend)

I don't remember anything about A Run for Your Money. I remember not liking the two Mann films. The Fuller Jesse James picture wasn't all that memorable either. Hellfire was a weird low budget c-western that I think was on NWI a while back. I remember liking it, but it hasn't stuck with me. I confess that I don't remember anything about The Inspector General. But the Top 3 for the year are still solid. All three of them made it on my Top 30 of the 40s list and even bigger, all three of them made it on my Top 100 list. Remember that great Top 100 project that we all finished? Yeah, me too.

So, back to The Man on the Eiffel Tower. It's pretty great, though I'm sure that what I love about it frustrates others. Laughton plays a wonderful version of Maigret, as the plot has him doing pretty much nothing to solve the crime beyond letting the criminal unravel and give himself up. The most climactic moment of conflict in the film involves a decision to back away and not confront the criminal. I found it all satisfying. This film is based on the first Maigret novel that I ever read, the novel that made me really love Simenon's Maigret books. Contrary to noir connoisseurs, I've hated every one of Simenon's non-Maigret crime novels that I've read, but the Maigret books are cozy fun. Lots of pipe smoking and beer drinking and a detective that loves his enemies in order to understand them. What's not to love?