My 2025 Watchlist Frenzy!

I was declaring Jim Jarmusch one of my favourite filmmakers after having seen only one of his movies - 2005 Cannes Grand Prix winner Broken Flowers, which featured the inestimable talent of Bill Murray. That seems a lifetime ago, but in the interim, out of all six Jarmusch films I'd seen up to this point, I'd never seen anything he made previous to Dead Man (1995). Although this film, Down By Law, was made early in his career (his third feature), Jarmusch had progressed so far already that he seems to have mastery over all he needed to have to create his special brand of hip, music and poetry-driven quasi-noir brand of movie. It's like an art film that absolutely anyone could latch onto and enjoy, taking place in an astoundingly well-shot (the great Robby Müller served as cinematographer) New Orleans and Louisiana bayou, while featuring three characters thrust together by circumstance when put into the same jail cell. Zack (Tom Waits) is a DJ by profession and petty criminal on the side, hitting a low point in his life after leaving another job and seeing another girlfriend leave him. Jack (John Lurie) is a pimp who has been set up with an unseen underage girl. Roberto (Roberto Benigni) is an eccentric Italian card shark who has accidentally killed a man in self defence once caught in his cheating ways. These three will form the unlikeliest of bonds on an adventure which could prove a fresh start considering the dismal hole all three are in.

This is the kind of film that really feels ad-libbed, and while I don't know at all if this was the case, I'd venture that it was in many instances. There's a naturalism to the dialogue that simply doesn't feel like it's been written, and a genuine 'in-the-moment' freshness to each funny moment that seems too spontaneous to be anything other than improvisation. I loved it - it's genuinely funny when it needs to be, especially via the surprisingly funny Benigni, who I don't usually like. I have to admit, he's pretty hilarious in this which perhaps illustrates that he was ill-served by many of the movie projects he ended up being involved in. In the meantime Tom Waits had developed into a bona-fide full-fledged actor by this stage in his career. While I've seen a few of the movies John Lurie has appeared in (Paris, Texas, The Last Temptation of Christ, Get Shorty etc) I don't remember him in them, and he's the odd one out as far as being a performer I really know. He acquits himself well enough here, but it's Benigni that steals every scene he's in, and Waits that impresses the most. In the meantime the whole feature is a black and white visual feast, the beauty of this often contrasting with the more rugged, base and low-rent roughness of the characters themselves. At times though, there are long, still takes in which the interaction between these three takes center stage above and beyond anything else.

These days, this is my kind of movie. It's independent American cinema that is nonetheless technically brilliant and driven by a filmmaker who is pretty much well known without making many movies that you could call part of the mainstream - but that all means nothing if the movie itself isn't thoroughly enjoyable to watch and easy to appreciate. I guess I gathered very early on that Jarmusch made the kind of cinema that resonates with me (although I do dislike one of his films - The Limits of Control), and it's only a shame that he's not more prolific. When you watch Down By Law you're really struck by how much value these characters get from being forced into an uncomfortable proximity with each other - people they'd normally spit on if passing them on the street. Underneath the hostility and guarded aloofness there's a spiritual camaraderie waiting to be born that's of invaluable worth, and that's what really forms the core of the whole movie. It's something that's so transformative it's as beautiful as nature itself, which we see a lot of, and I don't think it's any accident that we start the film on dank city streets and end in the pristine wilderness. That's the kind of journey we take with Down By Law - another very excellent feature from the great Jim Jarmusch.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #166 and in Steven Jay Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Nominated for then Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1986.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Down By Law

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Benigi is also really funny in Jarmusch's "Night on Earth"

I remember going to see this 30 years ago. The stuff with his brothers was distressing. On a more light-hearted note, a buddy of mine is in the front row of the audience which Crumb is speaking to in the film. He’s comics artist, Marc Damicis. He’s the guy with long hair and glasses. This is a sample of his work. He draws monsters mostly.

Attachments

 

I don't know, because I haven't watched it yet.

I'd give it a shot for sure. The big revelation that Robert Crumb's brothers are worse off than him was what especially resonated with me so well. It gives context to how you initially viewed Robert with how it gets you to rethink your initial perception of him.

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Stranger Than Paradise is also really good from Jarmusch.

I really need to watch Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day again, and that's not an easy ask for this 4-hour epic Taiwanese film - or any 4-hour film for that matter. There are times when going in blind can actually hurt your film-watching experience, because instead of knowing what you're really meant to be appreciating, you instead try to grasp where the film is going and what's really central to the narrative and how it's not what you were expecting or hoping it might be. Set against the uncertainty and cultural turmoil in Taiwan during the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, it focuses on the smaller scale in the world of a teenage boy - Hsiao Si'r (Chang Chen), and his disaffection with simply studying and gaining entry to a top Taiwanese school. Instead, Si'r is interested in gangs, and Ming (Lisa Yang) - an attractive, introspective girl who he has a hard time fully investing in because his waywardness and penchant for feeling antagonistic towards anyone he feels has dishonored him or themselves makes life chaotic and destructive. He holds a grudge against Sly (Hung-Yu Chen), who leads the Little Park Boys gang in the absence of it's legendary leader Honey (Lin Hong-ming) - but it's the complexities, aimlessness, friendships, conflicts, culture, family and restlessness of life in Taiwan that stirs Si'r's attention towards trouble and a hopeless attempt to square his feelings for Ming with his need to make sense of who he should be.

A plot summary is not something A Brighter Summer Day is really amenable to because it works it's scenes together in the same kind of serpentine way Si'r's life stumbles ever forward - each new insult, piece of news or moment of violence setting Si'r on a slightly different track. It gives the movie a circular, directionless feel narrative-wise, and almost as if to amplify this we have over 100 characters with speaking roles constantly reshaping the plot in minor ways - very much how real life feels as opposed to a traditional story. Although I've pretty much put forward that the movie is about Si'r, it also has plenty of time to spare so that it sometimes focuses on his family. Si'r's father (played by Chang Kuo-chu) fled the Chinese mainland during the strife there and finds it hard adapting to semi-foreign circumstances - he has trouble with his son, but also the authorities who seem suspicious with his past involvement with the Chinese Communist Party. His mother (played by Elaine Jin) provides an endless source of advice which often feels questionable or risky. This family (including three siblings) are for the most part completely uninvolved with Si'r's life, except for when he gets into trouble at school. It's this lack of involvement and guidance that allows the boy to drift into delinquency and gang-related crime - when not at home he's either off somewhere or at a friend's house. It does give the movie a tremendous variety of location though, both indoor and outdoor.

I only now feel ready to watch and appreciate A Brighter Summer Day - now that I know what it's about and how it works. My mind had a lot of trouble grasping it the first time around, and I felt strangely disengaged as I groped for a stronger sense of "what was happening", and also a stronger sense of who Hsiao Si'r really was. Tending to lack outward expression, he's a character that doesn't show a lot of emotion other than a bristling need to stand up for himself (at times in a crazy brave way) and his honor, protect his friends and search for something intangible in the gang life of 1960s Taiwan. The youth culture has that sense of rootlessness you get when a large part of the population is basically refugee-based and there are no traditional guidelines because of the melting pot this creates. I know I won't get Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" out of my head in the near future, and will also remember this film's sterling visual qualities - but I think at some stage in the near future I'll create a series of reviews of Edward Yang movies and use it as an excuse to not only see this again with the benefit of hindsight, but also Taipei Story (for almost the exact same reason) and Yi Yi. I find the prospect tantalizing, and I also find my ability to not enjoy actually watching a film because of a kind of restless first-viewing lack of focus something that often makes it hard to judge a movie like this fairly. That's absolutely exponentially amplified when the film has a running time of 237 minutes.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #804 and in Steven Jay Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Ranked 78th in the 2022 Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch A Brighter Summer Day

I had similar feelings towards A Brighter Summer Day. I might have liked a it more than you, however, but I might have liked The Terrorizers from Yang more.

I’ll be watching A Taipei Story and Yi Yi soon to have a fuller grasp of Yang, but I seem to prefer Hou from Taiwan’s New Wave over Yang.

What a funny film The Music Man is - undoubtedly playful, fun, joyous and cheerful at all times with a story that's pretty offbeat for a musical. Harold Hill (Robert Preston) is a travelling con man, and his go-to swindle consists of convincing townspeople he's in the process of setting up a boy's marching band - he charges parents a high price for his guidance and expertise before skipping out of town when instruments and uniforms arrive. Okay, he's not Sweeney Todd, but there aren't that many lead characters in movie musicals that happen to be the bad guy. His foil is the town librarian Marian Paroo (Shirley Jones) - yes, Marian the librarian. The story takes a turn at a certain stage, and it's something of a spoiler, so I'll just say that you have to go with it as it feeds into the exuberance that's simply been part and parcel of the whole package. The overall tone is exceedingly light and funny - a good example of which is when a gaggle of older ladies is directly related (through brief cutaways) to a group of chickens, or when Hill continually distracts a group of four men set the task of demanding his credentials by encouraging them to break out into this or that song. Song and dance is the order of the day - with the film's most memorable set piece being the town hall meeting which erupts into "Seventy-Six Trombones", a moment famously spoofed by the "Monorail" number in an early episode of The Simpsons.

Beyond Buddy Hackett (who plays Hill's old friend and acquaintance Marcellus Washburn) there weren't too many recognizable faces as far as I was concerned - but I was particularly delighted to learn that Marian's kid brother, Winthrop, was played by a 7-year-old Ron Howard! (He's credited as Ronny Howard.) Nice to know that both Shirley Jones and Ron Howard are still with us - sometimes it strikes me when watching one of these old musicals that every single person that I'm watching sing and dance have since passed away. Interesting to note that Robert Preston was carrying his performance over from the Broadway show - I kind of wish I'd seen this before first watching Victor/Victoria, as I'd have enjoyed the recognition. Anyway, this was plenty colourful and the set designers/decorators did a great job - as well as the costume designers. The songs are infectious and enjoyable to listen to, and the choreographers have done really well to boot. I was never bored, and that's a more difficult feat to acheive with me when a movie is stretched out to 150-odd minutes. Longer movies often give me pause, for I know straight away that they have to be all the more compelling and enjoyable to keep me invested over the ensuing lengthy time period. Last year La Commune provided an exceptional challenge at 345 minutes.

Embarrassing admission - I always thought "Till There Was You" was solely a Beatles song - or at least, they were the only ones I'd heard sing it. I finally learned that this is where the song came from. I also enjoyed discovering that this is where "Shipoopi" originated (sung by Buddy Hackett here.) So, apart from "Seventy-Six Trombones", those were the only songs I really knew, but most of the many others feel instantly catchy. Like I said earlier - it struck me as novel that a con man would form the basis of such a merry, sunny and effervescent celebration of life, music and love. I was constantly wondering how this movie could possibly end in a fashion typical to musicals (the musical version of The Producers managed it, but overall that anarchic comedy was a little darker and as such had more freedom.) The great advantage this musical has is the fact that anything is possible in it's world as far as character and motivation go, and we're never given cause to despise "Professor Harold Hill" despite his cheating ways - his persuasiveness and ability to be likable not only serves his purpose in the show's narrative, but also gives him the impetus to earn an audience's favour, eventually. It will always strike me as odd, though it hardly matters once that band starts playing. Pure joyousness on celluloid.

Glad to catch this one - Nominated for 6 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Sound, Best Editing and Best Score (which it won.) Also nominated for 6 Golden Globes - interestingly more directed towards the actors and director.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Music Man

I quite like The Music Man
Preston was made for this film.

The Music Man is one of my all-time favorite movies.
Robert Preston was born to play Professor Harold Hill.

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If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

I also love The Music Man. I haven't seen it in years though.

Rachel Rachel was at times a frightening experience for me - probably far more than it was meant to be, but it's the kind of movie where you invest all of your empathy in a fragile character and then sweat it out as she hovers between breakthrough or breakdown. The way the story is set up feels like a Tennessee Williams play in general, but also The Glass Menagerie specifically - and knowing how those particular pieces end had me geared for something that might be at the very best bittersweet, and at worst heartbreaking. Our protagonist is Rachel Cameron (Joanne Woodward), a 30-something reclusive schoolteacher who has rigid emotional barricades surrounding her, and as such she shrinks away from human touch. Rachel often finds herself stuck at home looking after her elderly, overbearing mother May (Kate Harrington) - but there's some co-dependency in their fraught close-quarters relationship, as Rachel uses her role in her mother's rituals as an excuse not to go out with coworkers and friends. That all changes once Rachel visits her friend Calla Mackie's (Estelle Parsons) intense cult-like church group and begins having sexual liaisons with past classmate Nick Kazlik (James Olson). It's this that finally breaks her out of her world of safe solitude and fervent daydreaming.

This movie sets itself up as interesting straight away via the method by which it plays out Rachel's daydreams for us to observe - flashes of thought that go from the heady impulsive kissing of a stranger to worrying split-second moments thinking of suicide and murder. Her thoughts of death come with childhood memories of growing up as an undertaker's daughter - her father, Niall (a young Donald Moffat in flashbacks) having passed away, but the business retained and now run by Hector Jonas (Frank Corsaro). A lot of tension builds up via scenes that illustrate just how repressed Rachel is compared with her inner world, and many close-ups manage to betray the stiffness in Woodward's facial muscles and fright in her eyes. Rachel often imagines that everyone is looking at her and judging her - none of this abnormal, but the sweet friendship she has with fellow teacher Calla steers the movie into a really interestingly strange and surprising place once Rachel relents and goes to Calla's Christian revival meeting - by then the audience knows what kind of psychological minefield is being traversed once doors are opened and Rachel stops saying "no" to every friendly invitation cast her way. Joanne Woodward illustrates this so fully that this ended up being one of those performances where I never saw the actress - only the character. There's a full-on dedication to her role shown, which was needed to bring such a difficult character to life.

I grew to love Rachel as a character - a beautiful person - and that only served to further my abundance of anxiety related to her psychological wellbeing. That brings me front and center to another great thing about Rachel Rachel - this protagonist's fears and anxiety are complex and not whittled down to some past trauma or impediment (I'm looking at you Marnie.) I'm also very much a fan of the film for reasons that would be very much spoiler specific, but I like the way the original novel is described as portraying a woman who is going through "a second adolescence" as she comes to recognize herself as "the adult to her aging mother." There's often a gentleness felt when Gayne Rescher's cinematography combines with the Jerome Moross score - especially during the movie's delicate lovemaking scenes - that still doesn't betray how difficult a transition this is for Rachel, however much she wants it. I didn't know where this movie was going to take me, and I'm still kind of surprised by much of it - a strange kind of feature directorial debut from Paul Newman (who, funnily enough, would end up directing a version of The Glass Menagerie in 1987.) A delicate, dream-like vision of an inner awakening that creates a central character bravely stepping out from under her own fears to face life - all of it's heartaches and joys included.

Glad to catch this one - Nominated for 4 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Joanne Woodward), Best Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Stewart Stern). Paul Newman would win a Golden Globe for directing, and Woodward one for Best Actress.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Rachel Rachel

You're welcome.
But seriously, as I've said many times, this is my favorite musical that doesn't have a glam-rock Frankenstein in it.
And the reasons are almost all covered in your review, charm, humor, likable characters, good songs, strong performances, and joy.
I particularly just like how they paint the small town and all its personalities. The Mayor, the Mayor's Wife (stage veteran Hermione Gingold, who is arguably the funniest person in the movie), the Mayor's daughter (ye gods!), the alleged "hoodlum" kid, the Ladies Auxiliary (and now, a Grecian Urn), the barbershop quartet guys who couldn't stand each other until he got them singing together, Buddy Hackett... and, of course Marian, too smart and too deep for this town, the sadder but wiser girl (and what a freakin' voice).
Also, a number of the songs are really great. The opening number on the train is so cleverly constructed and of course, Trouble In River City is a phenomenal number (I watched an interview with the writer/composer on how he conceived and built out the song and it is just genius).
Yeah, it's a real winner. Sometimes people, I think, get hung up on its light airiness and its fantasy ending, but it is an amazing example of a Classic Musical from stem to stern.

When my brother died, my mother went into an obsessive tailspin - and, now that I think about it, every kind of grief can give rise to the kind of thinking that forms the core of movies like Rosemary's Baby. Granted, the fear is well-founded in these movies, but it's the fear that forms the core of Lyle - a little low-budget horror flick set in Brooklyn which features Gaby Hoffmann as Leah, a young pregnant mother who loses her infant daughter and while dealing with the grieving process, comes to suspect that someone close by means her progeny harm. Her partner, June (Ingrid Jungermann), is the strong and silent type. Her neighbour and landlord, Karen (Rebecca Street), appears to be quite nutty - and so consumed by pregnancy and children that she often pretends to be pregnant herself, despite her advanced age. The upstairs neighbour, Taylor (Kim Allen), is a model, by profession, and a source of comfort and information for the stricken, panicky Leah. Poking his head into the narrative now and then is "Threes" (Michael Che), a friend to the couple and recording artist that record-producer June has discovered. Along with little Lyle herself (Eleanor Hopkins), this makes up the world of this brief 62-minute foray into territory which feels a little limited but has obvious potential and really unleashes Gaby Hoffmann's thespian potential to it's absolute max.

It's kind of a shame that this appears to be the shoestring no-frills low-budget movie it is because there's definite spook-potential pouring from what's set up here, and I felt the movie lacked just a little in it's overall presentation. What we do get comes mostly from Hoffmann and the way she presents her character's delicate, frantic and fearful psyche when Leah starts falling down deeper and deeper into a spooky threat-filled rabbit hole. Her suspicions (and by relation, ours) start nearly from the get-go as she peeks through doorways and overhears the unsettling behaviour of Karen - nobody wants to be raising their precious little girl in the midst of the certifiably insane. Of course, we know that we're watching a movie and that something must be wrong - mentally I goaded Leah on. "Yes! Be suspicious! In fact, get out!" You never know though - sometimes the paranoia itself is the enemy, and of course most of the fun comes from our not knowing how much of the danger is in Leah's mind and how much might be real. Rebecca Street as Karen has a whole load of fun with such a kooky role, but the rest of the atmosphere seeps from the building Leah and June have so recently occupied - on old-style Brooklyn home which has an unsettling history of it's own once Leah decides to do a little research in her endeavour to investigate her grief away.

Once the movie ended I felt a bit like I'd watched an abbreviated version of what could have been - each major moment hitting as it should but still feeling rushed and ever-so-slightly perfunctory. Still, I'd pay money to see a fully fleshed-out version of exactly this story - especially with Gaby Hoffmann and Rebecca Street reprising their roles. Lyle has been described as a "lesbian Rosemary's Baby" (the internet, as always, full of tact and delicacy) - it plays around a lot with the anxieties associated with pregnancy and motherhood, but also adds a large dose of grief to the mix, giving the film it's own unique type of formula. There's one scene involving a facetime-type conversation which evolves into a moment of pure horror, and the way Stewart Thorndike incorporates normal, everyday glitches into the concoction to make what we're seeing even more disturbing, unsettling and uncertain was really brilliant I thought. Everything that could be done was - as long as it didn't cost too much - and as such this is upper tier as far as low budget filmmaking goes. The constraints eat into the overall quality though - and that comes through in the general presentation and the way the narrative is so pressed for time and space. What it is, though, is full of great ideas, thinking and performative execution.

Glad to catch this one - Lyle was planned as the first in a trilogy of "female-driven horror films", the second of which might be Stewart Thorndike's follow-up feature, Bad Things (2023) - another female-driven horror film either way.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Lyle

Yay! I've been championing this one for a while now, and delighted to see someone check it out. I hear you on the limits of the budget/resources, though I wasn't quite as bothered. In fact, I felt like the length of the film was really suited to the story.


I had held off on this film for a while, but when I finally got around to it I thought it was really strong. And it's the rare horror film where I think that the last act is the strongest and the ending is really, really good.

I don't get to watch many films from Thailand so I was certainly happy that there'd be something a little unique and different about Shutter - another entry in what was a great Asian horror trend which featured young female ghost antagonists stalking their living victims via supernatural means, almost always for the purpose of vengeance. Another happy factor was the fact that I love ghost pictures - and yes, we do see some "real" ghost photographs in the movie - although the scope of this horror film broadens the deeper into it we get. Shutter is a busy ghost movie - and by that I mean nearly every scene once it's up and running features our spectral "villain" making her presence felt. It starts with photographer Tun (Ananda Everingham) and his girlfriend Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee) running over a pedestrian with their car and fleeing the scene. It's not long before a mysterious spiritual presence starts showing up in Tun's photography. Is it the girl that Tun and Jane ran over with their car? If you're thinking the movie surely couldn't be that straightforward, you'd be dead right - and as Tun and Jane's life becomes a living hell via this haunting, they decide to investigate. In the meantime, their friends start to mysteriously commit suicide.

Shutter eases back a little on the old reliable jump-scare factor, and only really plays on our nerves a handful of times - instead relying on the visuals it conjures up to be enough to make us uneasy. That makes sense considering that it's based around evidence of ghosts and spirits showing up in photographs - a visual medium - but our spectral presence, Natre (Achita Sikamana), isn't content to just photobomb Tun and/or Jane, and will of course show up in all manner of places, such as a darkroom sink, under the bed, down the hall, outside the car window, etc. Even in a few dreams, which I'm sure will infuriate some viewers. Natre's make-up effects are great - her whitened face bloodied in an unsettling manner. There are sequences and set-pieces that stand out - a chase down a ladder (which Natre descends in an inverted position - you just try descending a ladder like that!), a completely darkened photography studio, a speeding car - and of course every time a series of photos are being taken. Also, I very much appreciated the fact that Tun and Jane visit a magazine editor who increases his circulation by publishing "ghost photographs". They're always faked of course...except on the odd occasion when they very well could be real. How can you get up to any trickery when your submission happens to be a polaroid?

I was very much ready to feel disappointed with Shutter when it seemed that this would be a cut-and-dried case of an innocent hit-and-run victim coming back to haunt the people that killed her - but as mentioned earlier, there's a fair bit of mystery and revelation that completely changes the picture. Natre herself managed to have something of a harrowing backstory of course - and the actress chosen to play her looks just a little spooky to begin with (as does her mother who, although a plain and simple natural living person, gave me the heebie jeebies just to look at her.) I don't know if perhaps that was my bias, drawn from the context in which these characters exist in the story, but it was a nice bit of casting if you ask me. I don't know if this was over familiarization, but the movie didn't creep me out as much as it was probably meant to though - I do think this is simply down to the number of similar movies I've seen down through the years. When a character discovers a mass of hair manifesting itself in a sink, my mind immediately registers "Ju-On : The Grudge", and for a moment Shutter feels somewhat derivative. What I was pretty satisfied with was the storytelling, the fact that this was a Thai take on the genre, the excellent visuals and the film's breakneck pace. I definitely view it as one of the better takes on J-Horror-inspired spectral female vengeance.

Glad to catch this one - a big box office success in Thailand, winning the 2005 Golden Kinnaree Award for best film at the Bangkok International Film Festival . Remade in various countries, including America in 2008 under the same title.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Shutter