Flesh + Blood (1985)

I like Paul Verhoeven’s weird portraits of people who don’t really know what they want and are pulled in multiple directions. His films are always sexy, always violent, and always a little gross. This is a story set in medieval times, but it’s no Decameron. This is a joyously grim and totally perverse tale that has a lot more in common with Verhoeven's earlier Spetters than it does with Pasolini's much more celebratory version of the middle ages.

Rökkur (2017)

Rökkur (Rift) is a spooky gay horror (?) thriller thing. It also doesn’t really work. It’s not bad, but I found it very very messy.

The Window (1949)

The Window is great! A truly scary and thrilling noir based on a boy who cries wolf one too many times and then sees a murder but then no one believes his lying ass. For me, Bobby Driscoll’s annoying performance is the only drawback in this tense film with very good acting, a great score, and excellent photography and editing. This should be available on YouTube to watch. I’m pretty sure it’s in the public domain. (I watched it because I was in a cabin in the woods in Virginia with spotty wifi but I had downloaded The Window to my hard drive for some reason so I could watch it without interruption.)

Johnny Corncob (1973)

Psychedelic Hungarian animation? Sign me up. János Vitéz is nationalist and outright racist at times, and I didn't love it quite as much as I loved Marcell Jankovics' later film Son of the White Mare, but this is very cool.

This Must Be the Place (2011)

This Must Be the Place is the oddest, quirkiest Paolo Sorrentino movie – his first in English – and it boasts one of the weirdest Sean Penn performances. I don’t know… I don’t think I’ve made sense of this. I will say that it was quite funny at times; it really cracked me up, but this was only occasional. It’s just odd. I don’t even think I expect comedy from Sorrentino in this way. Who knows.

Blue (1993)

Blue is stunning. It is also very hard to watch. But maybe it’s not meant for watching? You miss nothing if you look away, and yet the film is noting how so many are looking away. From AIDS, from death, from the war in Bosnia. But also, quite specifically, from those who are dying. This is on Criterion until the end of the month.

Birds Do It, Bees Do It (1974)

This is very interesting. It starts out with the sex lives of various animals. That’s about 70 minutes or so. Then the last 20 minutes are a chilling, truly perverse explanation of the ways humans have reorganized the reproduction of animals we eat so that we can better produce them in factories. It’s clever, and its point of view is archly sardonic. It doesn’t say that factories inseminating cows and surgically removing fertilized eggs from sedated heifers is horrible, but the film shows it, and the conclusions are easy to draw without saying anything.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Why does The Wind and the Lion insist on being so silly? It describes war, excesses of masculinity, and numerous senseless killings. But it is rated PG and is much more interested in joking and good-naturedly shaking its head about the politics of colonialism and the horrors of war. I was not charmed.

The Man in the Glass Booth (1975)

I gotta tell you... I don't get it. Now listen, I love Maximilian Schell, but this was stagey, and the emotions and dialogue feel like very overblown theatre at all times. For me this did not work.

Why did I watch this? Good question. It was a part of a series in the 1970s of plays made into films that played a very limited run in theatres. But Schell was nominated for an Oscar for this (in the same year Glenda Jackson was nominated for her performance in Hedda and James Whitmore was nominated for his performance in Give 'Em Hell Harry! – both of which are also plays and neither of which I've seen) so I'm getting started on watching these 1975 performances, especially now since The Man in the Glass Booth, after being unavailable for many years, appeared on YouTube recently.

War Requiem (1989)

After adoring Derek Jarman's Caravaggio, I was disappointed to find myself less patient with his War Requiem, a feature-length film without dialogue set to Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. Honestly, in theory this is a cool idea. I've loved similar concepts on occasion, including an incredible version of The Passion of Joan of Arc set to Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light which I was grateful to be able to hear performed live by the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park back when I lived in Orlando. But anyway... Jarman's film is hyper theatrical in ways I didn't totally understand, and because there's no dialogue it often felt indulgent and distant. There is a very smart interpretation of the sacrifice of Abraham – but it's in the original Britten text, so it was a kind of literalization of the music. I don't know. This is cool in parts, but it left me rather cold.

Asteroid City (2023)

I thought the new Wes Anderson film was really charming. And also… I think the theatre thing it's doing really gets at something. I love theatre. Part of what Anderson is trying to think about is what’s real and what’s not. And like… when are our feelings real and when are they not? I love that part of the movie: the part that knows it’s fake, but then asks what we can get through fakery, asks what theatricality can teach us. The more I think about this the more fond of it I am.

Unrest (2022)

Cyril Schäublin's Unrueh (Unrest) is an unconventional history film about Swiss anarchists in the 19th century. This doesn’t make it easy on its viewers but I liked it anyway.

Godland (2023)

Hlynur Pálmason's Vanskabte Land / Volaða Land (Godland) is mysterious and haunting, but mostly it’s gorgeous. The images we get of Iceland are stunning. The main character is… horrible, but the movie makes fun of him in intriguing comic ways. It’s actually quite a funny film. That feels like a weird thing to say about a movie that is so troubling, but it’s true. Also I adored Ingvar Sigurðsson in this.

As far as I know this is only playing on the Criterion Channel at the moment. It's a must-see.

L'Immensità (2022)

Emanuele Crialese's L'Immensità is good. I liked its surreal elements best. Story wise it’s very similar to Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy, but in terms of how the story is told L'Immensità is much more about being a kid and the world just being enormous and large and hard to figure out. (I’m an adult and I definitely haven’t, so I must say I identify.)

Two from Jerzy Skolimowski

I’ve been watching Skolimowski’s stuff since last year’s Io was so wonderful and because I’ve never seen any of his work. Moonlighting (1982), however… is not great. It feels like it’s tied down and is never going to get anywhere. And then it sort of just doesn’t. To make matters worse, the central character is very difficult. He’s nervous the whole time, but he’s sort of impossible to identify with because of how Skolimowski tells his story. I found Deep End and Rysopis much more successful than this movie.

Deep End (released in the US in 1971) is fun, and then the ending is not fun, but it has some gorgeous shots in it. 

The Seventh Curse (1986)

The Seventh Curse (原振侠与卫斯理) is gory and insane and makes not one lick of sense. It’s a kind of Hong Kong Indiana Jones fantasy with practical effects. It has a murderous monster baby and a crypt keeper that transforms into a Ridley Scott alien. It also stars a young Chow Yun Fat (that's him with the pipe) and a young Maggie Cheung (all the way to the left). Honestly everyone should see this. 

I should also mention that Lam Ngai Kai's movie about a blood curse... in 1986. It’s very obviously about coping with the terror of HIV/AIDS.

My unseen movie club watched this gem in a dubbed version – we couldn't get ahold of a Cantonese version – but it was still worth the watch. 

Dog Bite Dog (2006)

I watched Dog Bite Dog (狗咬狗) because it was leaving MUBI at the end of the month, but I don’t think I was prepared for just how violent Cheang Pou-soi's movie was going to be. This is out of control. And I’m not sure it takes us anywhere at all really. Just violence for the sake of violence. Not much fun. Love me some Edison Chen, though.

Only in Theaters (2022)

Only in Theaters isn’t a great movie – the director, Raphael Sbarge, makes some very odd decisions vis-à-vis framing devices, and there are too many sequences about how we really, really just all have to be seeing movies in theatres – but the story of the Laemmle family is super interesting, and Greg Laemmle is a very compelling character. I feel great affection for this chain of theatres, and the film made me feel like I know these folks personally.

The Flash

Baby, I had a blast at The Flash. Ezra Miller is honestly genius, playing two versions of the main character. (I hope they’re doing better these days.) And it’s just chock full of good cameos. But the important thing here is that this movie is silly. It’s very, very funny.

Manhunter (1986)

Manhunter, which has the distinction of being the first film with Hannibal Lecter in it, is sexy, scary, dangerous. It's honestly so good. It’s crazy that William Petersen didn’t star in more films. He’s great in this.

Caravaggio (1986)

Whoa whoa whoa. I loved Caravaggio. It feels like an extraordinary step from Sebastiane to this, but Caravaggio is brilliant. Its art direction and mood feel like the Pasolini of The Decameron and Arabian Nights, but it’s also modern in interesting ways and the acting is really wonderful.

Sebastiane (1976)

Derek Jarman's Sebastiane has lots of slow-motion naked men in water. It is less clear what this has to say, but I’m not mad about it. And I’m gonna watch another 3 or 4 Jarman movies this month, so I will see what else he has in store for me. Also, this whole movie is in Latin... which made it hard to identify with these guys. Oh, I hated the opening to this, with its references to Fellini-Satyricon, but the rest is much better.

Also, it's been ages since I've seen Claire Denis's Beau Travail, but surely that movie is based on Sebastiane. I will need to look that up.