Concrete becoming alien through film.
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Stolen Kisses 1968
Adult world is a dirty place, yet what else once can do but plunge into it. So warm and funny, while remaining constant troubled. It has Truffaut's best comic timing, and his smartest uses of his Hitchcock studies as film discovery is equalled with perverse truth and love possibility. Leaud's performance is one of the great silent comedy turns, so many wonderful reacting shots, and is already heavy with the more neurotic side of his 1970s work.
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Fail Safe 1964
The minimalist presentation does often make for a compelling thriller in the way it plays off the large consequences and the closed room drama against it other. It is the movie saving grace as it i otherwise such a phony argument made from a lot of balanced rhetoric moves to achieve its message heavy end, by the time Fonda is in full pious mode about "our failures", there's very little to be salvaged. The movie most intriguing element is the…
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In the Wake 2021
A Japanese serial killer film more interested on investigating the whys. Ambitious, very resonant and making good use of the more grunt work police material against its more political background. A little overlong. Strong performances and Zeze manages to combine a glossy mainstream surface with a constant chilly feeling.
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Devil in the Flesh 1947
A minor screwball from Carlos Hugo Christensen early period. It is well executed enough, but as often the case lightness doesn’t come as natural to him and the movie seems to be asking for something that isn’t quite there.
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Assassin Club 2023
Director Delamarre got his start at Eurocorp and this plays like a cheaper worse Eurocorp movie: high concept, empty style, overedited scenes, unimpressive stuntwork. Last act laughable bad. Hrnry Goulding is not an imposing action star.
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The Pawnbroker 1964
As far as fake Hollywood art movies go, few tried as hard. It is all shock effects and masochist yearnings, while the movie works overtime to distract us from the easy machinations of the script. Steiger mannered performance and Lumet mannered direction complement each other much better than they should, slowly achieving some force.
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How to Blow Up a Pipeline 2022
Very engrossing as a heist procedural. It does the mapping a plan, adjust and execute with a good deal of skill. In more uncertain terms when it needs to connects the dots to its larger concerns. The flashbacks are a mixed bag and character work remain shaky despite some very good performances. The formal urgency doesn’t fully translate into a political pointed movie. In some ways, this is the reversal of Reichardt’s Night Moves, a weaker movie than How to…
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The Gilded Lily 1935
Superior Paramount romantic comedy. Solid script and Colbert is great in the lead with able support from an ideally cast MacMurray. Studio vet Wesley Ruggles does a good job of hitting the expected marks, it probably could use be a bit funnier, but it remains consistent very charming.
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Long Day's Journey Into Night 1962
It is very honest about its filmed play origins: Boris Kaufmann films it beautifully, but Lumet does no open up, he keeps his effects controlled m, his restrain well applied, and O’Neill is the only credited writer. Its dissolution exists into a symbolic space, a family of mind, that is very stagey, but in a good way. The emotional abuse is laid all there, but Lumet feels no need to locate it into the faux realism of so much of…