October 1, 2013

The Last Ten Movies I Saw

By michaelgloversmith

1. The Silence (Odar)
2. Underground (Asquith)
3. Black Sabbath (Bava)
4. Computer Chess (Bujalski)
5. M (Lang)
6. All That Heaven Allows (Sirk)
7. Bringing Up Baby (Hawks)
8. Stranger By the Lake (Guiraudie)
9. Stray Dogs (Tsai)
10. The Lady Eve (Sturges)

About michaelgloversmith

Filmmaker, author and Film Studies instructor. View all posts by michaelgloversmith
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 1st, 2013 at 9:22 pm and posted in The Last Ten Movies I Saw. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

10 responses to “The Last Ten Movies I Saw”

  • John Charet
    October 1st, 2013 at 11:09 pm

    I have seen numbers 3, 5, 6, 7 and 10 and loved them all. I gave them
    * * * * stars (Out of * * * *). On my site http://www.cinematiccoffee.com I replied to your Stanley Kubrick post. Your reply was very interesting and it is neat to see that you agree with my first three choices. Keep up the great work as always:) In case you are interested here is the link to my favorite Hitchcock films below:)

    http://cinematiccoffee.com/2013/09/27/my-favorite-alfred-hitchcock-films-final-revision/

    Reply
  • Mitchell
    October 1st, 2013 at 11:13 pm

    The scales have finally fallen from my eyes vis-à-vis Sirk. I am tempted to write a little piece about him. Perhaps another ‘Have You Tried….’ piece……I just rewatched Imitation of Life, which I always hated but this time around I found it devastating….despite Lana Turner!

    All That Heaven Allows is Sirk at his most sublime but I have recently seen smaller films like Lured and a very under-rated film called There’s Always Tomorrow which is All That Heaven Allows writ small.

    More to come

    Reply
    • michaelgloversmith
      October 2nd, 2013 at 8:28 am

      Glad to see you came around on Sirk. I showed All That Heaven Allows in class and the reactions it provoked were pretty divisive. Some students were really into it but others laughed at it, which I guess is understandable given how extreme the emotions are and how stylized the dialogue and acting are in comparison to the pseudo-realism that is popular today.

      There’s Always Tomorrow is an amazing film.

      Reply
      • Mitchell
        October 3rd, 2013 at 7:38 am

        Bravo for defining it as ‘pseudo-realism’. One of the hardest things for today’s audiences to appreciate is emotional stylization. They have been taught to mock it, it makes them uncomfortable. But other kinds of stylizations, say, like a man dressing up in a bat costume and waging a self-torturing battle against evil, doesn’t provoke laughter. I wonder why? I think the emotion invoked in Sirk is too close to the bone even though it appears on the surface to be over the top. Your thoughts?

      • michaelgloversmith
        October 3rd, 2013 at 7:58 am

        Ha! Great point about the guy in the bat-suit. One day that will seem sillier than Sirk, whose movies will be watched forever. I think “too close to the bone” is right. Movie characters in studio-system era Hollywood in general are more emotionally forthright than their counterparts today, which I think makes modern viewers nervous and so they laugh as a kind of defense mechanism. And Sirk’s characters are the most forthright of all. I’m sure this is what Quentin Tarantino meant when he had John Travolta order the “Douglas Sirk steak — bloody as hell” in Pulp Fiction: Sirk’s films are violent as hell, but the violence is emotional, not physical.

        Anyway, what’s interesting to me is that today’s audiences DO accept stylized dialogue and acting in comedies, just not in dramas. They expect Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, et al to act in cartoonish ways. But if anything seems exaggerated in a drama, they automatically reject it. Which is too bad. I personally think the best screen acting to be found anywhere is in German Expressionism!

  • John Charet
    October 2nd, 2013 at 10:04 pm

    Hey there. I loved the reply you left under “My Favorite Alfred Hitchcock Films” post. Always great to see someone love Vertigo as much as me:)

    Reply
  • John Charet
    October 2nd, 2013 at 10:09 pm

    Responding to your above comment, are you making a prediction of ones I have seen recently. Just interested. I ended the month of September watching some great cult films. Among them were Alex Cox’s Repo Man, Tod Browning’s Freaks, Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour, and Richard Linklater’s Slacker.

    Reply
    • michaelgloversmith
      October 3rd, 2013 at 7:50 am

      No, John, I’m saying the next time I post a list of the last 10 movies I saw, I will try and predict which ones you’ve seen before you tell me — I have a feeling they’ll be the ones I’ve screened in class!

      I really like all of the cult films you’ve listed. I’ve actually shown Detour in class to illustrate film noir.

      Reply
  • John Charet
    October 3rd, 2013 at 1:08 pm

    Sounds like a great idea:) I will let you predict next time you do “The Last Ten Movies I Saw” post:) “Detour” really is a classic and I believe it is on documentary filmmaker Errol Morris Top 10 favorite films list.

    Reply

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