Thanks to the Austin Film Society and its close proximity to my house, I get to see so much great old stuff on the big screen every year. Here are my favorite non-new release movies seen in theaters in 2024:
FAVORITES
Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1962)
Jacques Rozier was one of the most obscure French New Wave directors (possibly because he was far less prolific than his peers, making only a handful of full-length features) and one of the last ones left standing (he died in 2023 at the age of 96). His feature debut (following two short films) is a narratively and stylistically unpredictable movie about the very serious silliness and forward-motion chaos of late youth. It has a crackly, slippery energy that comes from Rozier letting the narrative follow the impulsive characters' behaviors and whims instead of the rigid constraints of a conventional plot, with the French-Algerian War a constant background hum.
Blue Sunshine (Jeff Lieberman, 1977)
An old favorite of mine I finally got to see projected large, Blue Sunshine is a little uneven and the characters sometimes make bafflingly stupid decisions, but I don't care about any of that because it's mostly a pretty great and deeply weird drug-soaked conspiracy thriller/horror movie spin on the death of the hippie dream, the '70s hangover, and the creeping changes leading to what would become the Reagan '80s (we even get a smarmy politician with a "Make America Good Again" campaign slogan). Shopping, drugs, guns, murder, football, bratty children, exotic pets, dishonest politicians, expensive colleges, mall discotheques, celebrity puppets, hairless acid freaks. America, baby. We've always been a shitshow, always will be, but at least that shitshow is weird as hell. Blue Sunshine gets it.
Caged (John Cromwell, 1950)
One of the toughest, hardest, bitterest Hollywood films ever and the prototypical women-in-prison movie. This anti-carceral-state classic makes the average film noir look like an Up with People halftime show.
Ceddo (Ousmane Sembéne, 1977)
Ceddo is visually and narratively uncluttered and pared to the bare essentials, but the images have tremendous power and the narrative is stacked layer upon layer with behavioral, historical, social, religious, and political complexity. Sembéne always seems to know exactly where to place the camera to get the most impact, emotion, and resonance from his actors' faces and bodies, the physical space, and the light. Tabata Ndiaye looks amazing on a big screen. Great Manu Dibango score.
Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Dario Argento, 1971)
The most neglected of Argento's '70s films because of its scarce availability on home video and the only one to have a prog rock drummer as its protagonist, Four Flies on Grey Velvet is more proof that Argento during his peak years was an insanely gifted visual stylist. It's also proof that when you hear a character in a peak Argento movie deliver one of the stupidest lines of dialogue you've ever heard, you better believe it's going to pay off later in some mind-blowing image or scene.
Glen or Glenda (Ed Wood, 1953)
Despite the decades-long propaganda campaign about Ed Wood being "the worst filmmaker who ever lived," his movies deserve to rise above the unfair "so bad they're good" tag. Watch Glen or Glenda and tell me this guy's the worst. Come on. Have you seen the movies they make now? Every shot has something visually interesting in it, Wood successfully experiments with image and form without wrecking his narrative, he ingeniously leans into his small budget to the film's advantage, the pace never drags, the jokes land, his plea for understanding and empathy is earnest and sincere (and more forward-thinking than either of our two current major political parties), there are enough sociopolitical contradictions here to keep academics and film critics busy for years, it's weird in unpredictable ways, it's personal and human and messy and dated and ahead of its time, Bela Lugosi gets to go hog wild without getting out of his chair, and the running time is a sensible 67 minutes.
The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982)
This is my favorite Scorsese movie at least three months out of every year (sometimes more, depending on the year), and I finally got to see it on a big screen. Even though late-night talk shows don't have the show-biz cachet they once did, Rupert Pupkin as a character may make even more sense in this century. Here's a guy who really, really, really knows that he deserves to be famous and is utterly consumed by that knowledge, but he has zero interest in any course of action that doesn't immediately result in him starting at the top, eventually leading to a hilarious kidnapping scheme so misguided and poorly thought out but so insanely confident that it can't help but succeed. Robert De Niro's performance as Pupkin is a strange kind of magic. How does he make such an annoying, unlikable, oblivious, delusional man so weirdly sympathetic? You're rooting for the creep even when you want to strangle him. (I love that when you finally see his act, he's mostly not that bad, and he has great timing.) The supporting cast of Jerry Lewis, Sandra Bernhard (I wish she worked with Scorsese more), Diahnne Abbott, and Shelley Hack do some of their best work, too. I didn't even talk about how Scorsese makes it look, but it's one of his most subtly virtuosic achievements. It bombed in '82, but it lives forever.
Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967)
I'm not a debate kid, but if I were, I'd gladly argue the case that Robert Bresson was the greatest filmmaker of them all. What he did could never be translated into some other form without losing every bit of its essence, meaning, or feeling. He wasn't a storyteller (as too many modern directors refer to themselves); he was a filmmaker. Mouchette is a natural followup to the previous year's Au Hasard Balthazar in that the titular main character (Nadine Nortier) is thrown into situations she can't choose or control, and she collects our sympathy and compassion even as she remains distant and unknowable. It may seem like I'm insulting Nortier to compare her to the donkey at the center of Balthazar (even though that donkey's performance was soulful as hell and Nortier has an incredible screen presence), but I'm not really comparing teenage girl to donkey so much as I'm saluting Bresson's mysterious genius at creating such intensely emotional work through contradictorily removing that emotion from the performances (he mostly, with a few exceptions, hired non-actors he called models and had them deliver their actions and lines flatly and without affect) and avoiding techniques used by other filmmakers to elicit emotion in the audience. By getting rid of the tricks and manipulations of the trade, Bresson's films land in a deeper place where the real feelings live.
Moving (Shinji Somai, 1993)
After seeing a couple amazing Shinji Somai movies at AFS last year, I was looking forward to this one despite it sounding a bit more conventional. I was not expecting what I got, a masterpiece on par with Typhoon Club. Moving plays out for two-thirds of the running time as a complex, character-driven drama (with some comedic scenes and tricky tonal shifts) about a young girl dealing with her parents' divorce, but just as I was starting to grow a bit restless, the final third went to an unexpectedly transcendent place that expanded, exploded, and reconstituted the entire experience. This one hit me hard.
My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991)
Another old favorite I finally got to see on the big screen. When I was in high school in the early '90s in my tiny little sports-obsessed Midwest small town, the only video store in town (though multiple other local businesses rented VHS in the '80s-'90s home video boom, including the only pizza place, a gas station, and three of the four convenience stores) started selling off tapes that didn't get checked out much for three bucks each. I bought My Own Private Idaho and River's Edge from this tub of barely rented gems one Friday when the rest of my family was out of town for the weekend (I have no idea where they would have gone without me, but I was 15 or 16, so my lifelong love of not attending gatherings and events was really kicking off at that time). After my well-timed video purchase, I promptly came down with some kind of 48-hour bug (a mild flu or bad cold, maybe; my memory is hazy). I spent the next two days watching both movies repeatedly while fading in and out of consciousness. A great way to see both. I can't be objective about either film's flaws (of which there are only a few). They are, and will always be, two of my favorites. River Phoenix is incredible in Idaho, and I love the chilly autumn look of the thing and the way Van Sant marries loneliness and absurdity and incorporates elements from Shakespeare's Falstaff plays (by way of Welles' Chimes at Midnight) into his story of Portland street hustlers, even when that incorporation is a bit awkward. I never tire of it.
Night Tide (Curtis Harrington, 1961)
Curtis Harrington has one of the most unusual bodies of work in motion pictures, his career encompassing avant-garde/experimental films, Roger Corman drive-in movies, moody art-horror indies, pulpy TV movies, and episodes of Wonder Woman and Charlie's Angels. He also worked for and befriended Kenneth Anger and Orson Welles and was close with James Whale near the end of Whale's life. The guy was a walking alternative history of Hollywood. Night Tide is a hauntingly dream-floaty B&W fantasy/horror/doomed romance that exists in a post-beatnik, pre-hippy countercultural transition period. I love its sustained atmosphere of quiet menace and sexual/romantic yearning and its depiction of Santa Monica as an isolated dream-village. I love Dennis Hopper's, Linda Lawson's, and Luana Anders' performances. I love the way Marjorie Eaton pronounces "clairvoyant." I love the mystery left lingering. This was a great one to see by myself at a late (OK, 8:30 p.m.) show on a weeknight. Conditions were perfect for us night-people loners.
The Plot against Harry (Michael Roemer, 1969/1971/1989)
I've said this a few times already and I will be saying it again, but this is another old favorite I finally got to see on the big screen, in a pristine 35mm print (hell yes). As you can tell by the complicated release date chronology, this one had a troubled history. Completed and screened at festivals in 1969, shown in one theater in Seattle in 1971, and finally given a nationwide and international arthouse release to much critical acclaim in 1989 and 1990, The Plot against Harry is one of the great New York movies. It's the story of a small-time Jewish gangster fresh out of prison and trying to figure out where he fits in a world that has moved on without him, but it's so much more than that. The humor is drier than kindling, and every scene takes you into the bustling world of a different subculture, workplace, family gathering, or social event. You get a real sense of the city as a living organism. Michael Roemer's wonderful work has had so much bad luck making its way into the world, and I appreciate every chance I get to see his small but beautiful filmography, especially on a big screen.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger series: Black Narcissus (1947) and
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)
Black Narcissus is a still-startling Technicolor dream/nightmare about the sexual desires of nuns and a mindboggling transformation of studio sets and matte paintings into stunning landscapes. It makes full use of Kathleen Byron's and Deborah Kerr's expressive eyes and the tension between the spectacularly sensual color scheme and the claustrophobic aspect ratio. Powell and Pressburger avoid the postcard pretty in favor of the terrifyingly beautiful. I Know Where I'm Going! begins as an enjoyable but slight comedic entertainment before turning on a dime into about seven other things. It supplies most of what you want and expect from a '40s classic but in uniquely strange ways. A near-mystical experience.
La Residencia aka
The House that Screamed (Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, 1969)
Another satisfying weeknight night-owl screening (in near-pristine 35mm). This is one of the great slow builds in horror. The way the light and the dark reflect off the actors' eyes in the closeups and medium shots is pretty amazing, especially the black pools in Mary Maude's eyes and the lightly bloodshot whites in Lilli Palmer's. I think this may be my favorite horror movie with a boarding house setting.
The Rubber Gun (Allan Moyle, 1977)
Before he directed a string of Gen X cult favorites (Times Square, Pump Up the Volume, Empire Records, and, to a lesser extent, The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag), Allan Moyle was deeply involved in the Montreal counterculture and its indie film scene as a writer, actor, and director. The Rubber Gun, his first feature as director, is a hangout movie about a sexually fluid, drug-taking, drug-selling Montreal collective of lovably demented art-damaged weirdos (led by a riveting Stephen Lack), a semi-hipster sociology grad student who enters their orbit (played by Moyle himself), and the narcotic detectives surveilling them (who all look like winners in a Bruno Gerussi lookalike contest — that's a Canadian deep cut for any Canuck readers out there). The movie supplies that '70s grit and texture I love so much with the hyper-stylization of the collective's frequently hilarious insider jargon. My heart, soul, and 87% of my aesthetic taste reside permanently in 20th century bohemia (circa 1870-2001), so this was extremely my cup of tea.
Hong Sang-soo series: The Day He Arrives (2011),
Night and Day (2008), and
Woman Is the Future of Man (2004)
I love that while Hong Sang-soo's films are concerned with the mundanities of everyday existence (food, drink, relationships, love, sex, friendship, work, school, leisure, pets, home life, social life, the economics of making art, weather, generation gaps), there's an unexplainable mystical current running through almost all of them where coincidence, chance, parallel lives, alternate timelines, dreams, purgatories, and chronological disruptions gently disturb the vérité realism. The Day He Arrives pushes those disruptions into the foreground. For my fellow Rohmer-heads, Night and Day (with an extremely rare for Hong two-hour-plus running time) is a bit like The Green Ray if Jerome from Claire's Knee was the main character. Woman Is the Future of Man is one of the most bleakly funny films about male friendship. The men in his early movies are so unlikable. Yowzah! They've gradually become more sympathetic in the last decade. One of my biggest laughs here was when a young man tells his friend that the reason they've been distant lately is because "you hugged my wife American-style."
She-Man: A Story of Fixation (Bob Clark, 1967)
Remember when I talked about how unusual Curtis Harrington's career was? Bob Clark's filmography is pretty damn weird, too. The same guy who made some of the most intense horror movies of the '70s also made A Christmas Story, the Porky's movies, Rhinestone, Supergeniuses: Baby Geniuses 2, and something called Karate Dog. He kicked off this oddball career with She-Man, a classic of whacked-out Florida exploitation about a soldier blackmailed into taking estrogen and working as a maid for one year for an evil drag queen named Dominita who lives in a rural Florida mansion with a house full of blackmailed servants who also help her blackmail politicians. You're a madman, Bob. The comedian Pat Cooper once bristled at someone calling him a star, responding with, "I'm not a star, I'm a personality!" Everyone in this movie is a personality, including the "expert" who opens and closes proceedings under the guise of educating the audience. Dorian Wayne as Dominita is a star and a personality. I wonder if Divine was a fan. They have some of the same flair when describing their evil deeds. This would make a great double bill with Female Trouble, my favorite John Waters movie.
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
If you're taking two shots every time I say that I finally got a chance to see an old favorite on the big screen (and another shot for when it's a 35mm print), get ready to call 911. I've watched The Thing dozens of times since first seeing an edited-for-television version on Denver's KWGN (the same channel that introduced me to Dog Day Afternoon when I was in third grade, blowing my nine-year-old mind) on the tiny little TV in my family's basement in small-town western Nebraska in the mid-'80s, and I've seen it in a variety of formats in a handful of small towns, college towns, and cities in the four decades (what the fuck?) since. I remain confounded by its initial negative reception in '82. Audiences hated it, critics hated it. Within a handful of years, it was almost universally beloved. (I love John Carpenter's curmudgeonly answer when he was asked if its belated adoration made up for its initial poor reception. I can't remember his particular phraseology, but I'll nutshell it: "No. It would've been so much better if people liked it then.") Was it too much of a downer for the average '82 moviegoer hopped up on the good vibes of E.T., Tootsie, and Annie? Were the special effects too splattery for the mainstream critics (who were so obnoxiously soap-boxy about that shit at the time?) I don't know, but the people of 1982 were wrong and deserve to be punished. The 2024 screening I attended was sold out. The people were right that night. A young guy in my row was really fidgety, which annoyed me, but the movie is too powerful to let a fidgety guy ruin the experience. Also in my row were two twentysomething women who had never seen the movie before and had no idea what was coming. It was a blast to see them leap up in their seats multiple times. I'm also just happy to see so many young people at nearly every repertory screening I attend at AFS. Not every young person is mainlining content creator slop.
Victims of Sin (Emilio Fernández, 1951)
This enormously satisfying film noir/nightclub musical hybrid from the golden age of Mexican cinema has enough melodrama to fuel three seasons of a soap opera, incredible dance numbers (soundtracked by Perez Prado and his band), the mesmerizing screen presence of Ninón Sevilla (if you like her style, you have to see the completely insane Aventurera), and dazzling B&W cinematography by the legendary Gabriel Figueroa. It's the good stuff.
Visible Secret (Ann Hui, 2001)
I've only seen three Ann Hui movies, and, although wildly different in rhythm and tone (and chronology) (a wacky martial arts horror/comedy, a heavy drama about aging, and this deeply eccentric ghost story), all three have a great sense of style and setting and a special sensitivity for capturing the shifts in emotion and behavior when characters are alone, in pairs, or in groups. Visible Secret also nails a tricky balance of light comedy and dark horror without letting either one suffocate the other.
Winter Kills (William Richert, 1979)
This cult oddity, a paranoid thriller that's also a Dr. Strangelove meets MAD magazine parody of paranoid thrillers, directed by cult oddity William Richert (the Falstaffian Bob in My Own Private Idaho), has one of the most incredible casts ever assembled (Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Eli Wallach, Sterling Hayden, Dorothy Malone, Tomas Milian, Belinda Bauer, Ralph Meeker, Toshiro Mifune, Richard Boone, Joe Spinell, Candace Rialson, Tisa Farrow, Berry Berenson, and Elizabeth Taylor), and its tonally berserk marriage of serious menace and over-the-top wackiness somehow works in spite of itself (especially because the characters' performative trolling, political gamesmanship, ostentatious swagger and displays of wealth, ridiculous conspiracies, and constant surveilling/constantly being surveilled and the film's depiction of the barely concealed shadow control of the government by billionaires couldn't possibly tell us anything about the national character now, right?). John Huston is hysterically funny, and the widescreen compositions are beautiful on a big theater screen (though you have to sit through the ugliest opening credits sequence of the '70s to get there). The film's back story is almost as nuts. It was financed and produced by two big-shot drug dealers with little filmmaking experience except for helping to distribute the Emmanuelle movies. Filming began in 1976 but was shut down in '77 by unions when most of the people who worked on it either weren't getting paid or were being paid in envelopes full of unmarked bills (except for Elizabeth Taylor, who got paid upfront). Shooting resumed in fits and starts until a poorly distributed release in '79 flopped hard in theaters. Later, one of the dealers was murdered, and the other one got busted and went to prison.
Frederick Wiseman series: Aspen (1991),
Canal Zone (1977),
Central Park (1989),
Missile (1988),
Model (1981),
The Store (1983), and
Welfare (1975)
I attended every screening in this series of Frederick Wiseman documentaries about institutions and their surrounding ecosystems, with the exception of 1969's Law and Order (about the Kansas City, Mo. police department) because I'd already seen it, but I give that one my full endorsement, too. Because the vast majority of his films are documentaries and because those documentaries are often saddled with the misleading label of cinéma vérité, Wiseman is still sorely underappreciated as a visual stylist and a highly subjective artist. His subject matter may be life as it happens, but he's not a fly on the wall passively recording it. He makes constant choices about what to look at, how long to look at it, how to frame it, what to put next to it, how to shape it and edit it, and where to place it inside the finished film, and he trusts his audiences to actively think about those choices without holding their hands or including any talking-head interviews or narration. He can also be savagely funny. I can't think of many other documentarians who so thoroughly understand the United States (top to bottom, bottom to top) who also care just as deeply about film as an artform.
The brutally funny Aspen takes on the Colorado ski town and its tourist economy and year-round residents (thematically, it's a sort of ski-bum sequel to Canal Zone), with his camera mercilessly surveying some of his least-aware subjects in an awe-inspiring natural setting. It almost feels like science fiction from the perspective of an astronaut-explorer visiting a strange planet (we even begin proceedings in a hot-air balloon), but the casual racism, sexism, ostentatious displays of disposable income, new age spirituality/quack science, Judeo-Christian pageantry, anemic bar-band Jerry Lee Lewis covers, and cameo appearances from John Denver and Ed Bradley let us know we're still in USA, Planet Earth. Canal Zone puts you inside the five-mile mini-USA in the Panama Canal Zone in the final years of its status as a U.S. concession and is one of the strangest depictions of imperialism, jingoism, and institutional exhaustion. It shows Wiseman's skill at letting people and systems reveal themselves without overtly hammering the audience (the constant pageants and speeches here do the hammering just fine on their own) and without having the documentarian open his mouth. Central Park, about, duh, New York City's Central Park, is the perfect canvas for his style and method and feels like the Wiseman movie that contains all other Wiseman movies. It may be my favorite of his films, though there are several contenders for that spot. Missile follows a Strategic Air Command class of trainees at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. As usual with Wiseman, the banality, pageantry, and performative qualities of institutions, speeches, and ceremonies are balanced by the nuts and bolts of how a job is done and the humanity and quirks of the individuals inside the systems, with the unique circumstance here that this specific workplace could cause all our violent deaths, which makes the banality of the training even funnier. Model goes inside a modeling agency in New York City and follows the more successful models to photo and commercial shoots and fashion shows. What struck me the most about Model is how deeply strange any institution looks when you're an observer and not a participant or consumer. This is obviously heightened in the world of big-time fashion modeling, but it made me think about his other work in the same light. The Store, about the flagship Neiman-Marcus department store in Dallas, is classic Wiseman in that it's a hyper-specific snapshot of a place, time, and institution; a universal document of the human condition in its absurdity, dignity, and debasement; and thoughtfully composed and constructed visual art. This is another contender for my favorite Wiseman and the only one to include a guy in a chicken costume delivering a singing birthday telegram that turns into a striptease performance. The Store really nails both the aesthetic appeal and the grotesque tackiness of the high-end department store as destination and lifestyle. Welfare is one of his toughest and most intense films but also one of his greatest. It's hard to imagine anyone today getting the kind of access he got in the mid-'70s in this Manhattan welfare office. Wiseman makes you look at the humanity of the people the system grinds up and spits out, the purposely bureaucratic hell of obtaining social services (constantly exacerbated by changes in federal and state laws based on which way the political winds are blowing), the desperation of poverty and hunger, the dehumanizing effects of working inside the system, and the moments of dark and absurdist humor that arise when people close to the edge are forced together in a confined space.
Edward Yang series: A Confucian Confusion (1994),
Mahjong (1996), and
Taipei Story (1985)
Edward Yang is one of the all-time great filmmakers despite having a relatively slender filmography (he didn't start making films until after quitting his computer engineering job in his thirties, and he died of colon cancer in his fifties), but what we have is so strong and so unlike anyone else. (I skipped A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi because I'd already seen those, but I give them both my legally notarized seal of approval.) Taipei Story is an empathetic and visually compelling portrait of youthful alienation with another great filmmaker, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, in a rare acting role. I love the unusual structure and flow of this one. A Confucian Confusion feels like a thematic update of Taipei Story. A decade later, the tragedy has mutated into screwball farce but the overall effect is almost as devastating. I thought this was a pleasant but minor work for the first third. By the end, I was all in. (Yang doesn't do minor.) Yang was as comfortable as Robert Altman with hugely sprawling casts. I got caught in a hail storm on my way to this one, but it was worth it. Mahjong can be rough going thanks to the stiffness of a couple English-speaking performances and some unusually heavy-handed dialogue, but it still looks amazing, is novelistically dense, and has a graceful way of dramatically changing tone without falling apart.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Beijing Watermelon (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1989)
A wildly ambiguous depiction of altruism that has an almost antagonistic relationship between dialogue and image. It wears out its welcome a bit, and the final scenes get pretty treacly even with Obayashi's fourth-wall-breaking, but I admire how almost every frame buzzes with human activity, overlapping dialogue, and the noise of life.
The Cassandra Cat (Vojtêch Jasný, 1963)
I thought I was going to love this Czech New Wave movie about a magic, sunglasses-wearing cat who rouses a group of disaffected kids to smash the system, but the narrative dragged for me after the sublime first third, we didn't get enough of the sunglasses-wearing cat, and we got too many scenes of people dancing and twirling for this curmudgeon. Still, the overall visual construction is pretty dazzling, and if you don't love the sunglasses-wearing cat, you ain't right.
The Gods of Times Square (Richard Sandler, 1999)
Filmed between 1993 and 1998, this documentary captures the last gasp of the old, weird Times Square amid the rapidly gentrifying Giuliani- and Disney-abetted tourist-friendly remake/remodel that was gobbling up the texture, character, danger, and eccentricity like a Pac-Man hired by corporate shareholders and the Christian right. Sandler tells this story through Times Square street preachers, philosophers, cultists, and mentally ill messianic figures (the rock musician who believes he's the second coming of Jesus is a particular favorite of mine). God makes, Disney takes.
Island of Doomed Men (Charles Barton, 1940)
A tight, intense, very silly, and deadly serious B-movie with a great Peter Lorre performance, here playing one of the worst and least remorseful human beings I've ever seen. The man knew how to smoke a cigarette. This is one of those movies that's maybe no great shakes (up for debate), but I love it anyway. A monkey hates Peter Lorre, and Peter Lorre hates the monkey. That's cinema, baby.
The Last Metro (François Truffaut, 1980)
Oddly compelling even though (or maybe because?) none of the cast has much chemistry with each other and even though the film stretches out to two hours and eleven minutes (a deadly running time that calls out for either a shorter, punchier edit or a longer one with more breathing room and space). The lived-in feel of the theater setting and Catherine Deneuve's face kept me interested. This one has been damned with faint praise as Truffaut consciously attempting a competently middlebrow prestige picture, the kind that get award nominations, but it's a lot more eccentric than that. If you're a Truffaut person, you should see it.
Oscar Micheaux series: Ten Minutes to Live (1932) and Veiled Aristocrats (1932)
Veiled Aristocrats has the stiffness and awkwardness of many early-sound and ultra-low-budget films and the poor quality of the existing footage and sound can make for a challenging watch, but Micheaux finds some powerful images despite the limited production resources and Lucille Lewis and Mabel Garrett both have mesmerizing presences. Ten Minutes to Live has some of the same issues, to a lesser extent, but is a great historical document of early 20th century black nightclub performers (Mabel Garrett is back again) and New York City, and it really takes off in the second part of its two-part structure with actors who command attention and some visually compelling train and city street locations. You have to hand it to any filmmaker who leisurely pauses the narrative to watch a beautiful woman smoke a cigarette, and Micheaux does this twice.
Not a Pretty Picture (Martha Coolidge, 1976)
Martha Coolidge, in her first feature (she'd go on to make the cult favorites Valley Girl and Real Genius), finds a structurally innovative way to marry form and content and both process heavy personal trauma and investigate how that trauma is depicted onscreen in this semi-autobiographical and semi-improvised recreation of the events surrounding her 1962 rape when she was a boarding school student. The film moves back and forth between narrative feature, documentary interviews, and rehearsal footage of Coolidge and her actors trying different approaches for the same scene. The effect is not as disjointed or jarring as you'd expect, and all three pieces complement and converse with each other. The rape scene itself is harrowing and difficult to watch even as it's presented with a certain amount of distance as a filmed rehearsal, but it never feels exploitative. I had a difficult time with some of the over-the-top acting in the boarding school dorm room scenes between the actress playing the young Coolidge and her roommate (played by her actual roommate at the time, which is a wild artistic choice) and I felt like those scenes hurt the overall film, but the rest of it works so well. Coolidge even includes a filmed conversation between her and her boarding school roommate turned actor where the latter woman criticizes how Coolidge has written and portrayed her. It's complex stuff that I may rate higher if I ever feel like watching this one again.
Continuing in this vein, here's a link to my letterboxd list of
Favorite First Watches of 2024. These are movies I watched for the first time in 2024 (at home or in the theater) that were at least two years old and that knocked my socks off, or, if I wasn't wearing socks, knocked my socks back on. It was sock pandemonium when I was watching these movies. It's a healthy/unhealthy mix of high art, low trash, high-low art-trash, classic and semi-recent Hollywood, international film, drive-in exploitation, and experimental/avant-garde biz.
Finally, here is the giant list of every movie I watched in 2024. I am not a mentally healthy guy.
Movies watched/rewatched this year
8 Million Ways to Die (Hal Ashby, 1986)
11 x 14 (James Benning, 1977)
13 Lakes (James Benning, 2004)
About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2023)
Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1962)
After Blue (Bertrand Mandico, 2021)
Age of Panic (Justine Triet, 2013)
The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1972)
AGGRO DR1FT (Harmony Korine, 2023)
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson, 2023)
American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (Martin Scorsese,
1978) (rewatch)
Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, 2023)
Angry Harvest (Agnieszka Holland, 1985)
The Ape (William Nigh, 1940)
Aspen (Frederick Wiseman, 1991)
Attachment (Gabriel Bier Gislason, 2022)
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (Andre Ovredal, 2016)
Barbarian (Zach Cregger, 2022)
The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, 2023)
Le Beau Serge (Claude Chabrol, 1958)
The Bed Sitting Room (Richard Lester, 1969)
Beijing Watermelon (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1989)
The Bikeriders (Jeff Nichols, 2023)
Black Moon (Louis Malle, 1975)
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger,
1947)
Black Sunday (John Frankenheimer, 1977)
Blast of Silence (Allen Baron, 1961)
Blood Relatives (Noah Segan, 2022)
Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell (Shinichi Fukazawa, 1995)
Blue Sunshine (Jeff Lieberman, 1977) (rewatch)
Bobby Deerfield (Sydney Pollack, 1977)
Boxcar Bertha (Martin Scorsese, 1972) (rewatch)
The Boys from Brazil (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978)
The Brink’s Job (William Friedkin, 1978)
A Bucket of Blood (Roger Corman, 1959)
Business Is Business (Paul Verhoeven, 1971)
Caged (John Cromwell, 1950)
Canal Zone (Frederick Wiseman, 1977)
Cannibal Tours (Dennis O’Rourke, 1988)
Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962) (rewatch)
The Cassandra Cat (Vojtech Jasny, 1963)
Ceddo (Ousmane Sembene, 1977)
Cemetery Man (Michele Soavi, 1994) (rewatch)
Central Park (Frederick Wiseman, 1989)
Children of the Corn (Fritz Kiersch, 1984) (rewatch)
A Child’s Garden and the Serious Sea (Stan Brakhage, 1991)
The Choirboys (Robert Aldrich, 1977)
Claire’s Knee (Eric Rohmer, 1970) (rewatch)
Close Your Eyes (Victor Erice, 2023)
Cocaine Bear (Elizabeth Banks, 2023)
La commare secca (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1962)
The Confrontation (Miklos Jancso, 1969)
A Confucian Confusion (Edward Yang, 1994)
*Corpus Callosum (Michael Snow, 2002)
Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024)
Darkman (Sam Raimi, 1990) (rewatch)
Dark Sanity (Martin Green, 1982)
The Dark Side of the Moon (D.J. Webster, 1990)
Dark Tower (Freddie Francis, 1987)
The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo, 2011)
Dead Heat (Mark Goldblatt, 1988) (rewatch)
Deadly Eyes (Robert Clouse, 1982)
Deadly Friend (Wes Craven, 1986)
Deadly Obsession (Jeno Hodi, 1988)
Dead Man Walking (Gregory Dark aka Gregory Brown, 1988)
Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988) (rewatch)
Deadstream (Joseph & Vanessa Winter, 2022)
Deadtime Stories (Jeffrey Delman, 1986)
Dear Dead Delilah (John Farris, 1972)
Death Game (Peter S. Traynor, 1977)
Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel, 1975) (rewatch)
Death Spa (Michael Fischa, 1988)
Deathsport (Nicholas Niciphor & Allan Arkush, 1978)
Deathstalker (James Sbardellati, 1983)
Death Valley (Dick Richards, 1982)
The Delinquents (Rodrigo Moreno, 2023)
Diary for My Children (Marta Meszaros, 1984)
Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001) (rewatch)
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude,
2023) (watched twice)
Dr. Giggles (Manny Coto, 1992)
Drive-Away Dolls (Ethan Coen, 2024)
The Duellists (Ridley Scott, 1977)
The Eighties (Chantal Akerman, 1983)
Eno (Gary Hustwit, 2024) (version generated at Austin Film
Society 8/19/24)
Equus (Sidney Lumet, 1977)
Every Which Way but Loose (James Fargo, 1978)
Evil Dead Rise (Lee Cronin, 2023)
Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2023) (watched
twice)
Fade to Black (Vernon Zimmerman, 1980) (rewatch)
Filming Othello (Orson Welles, 1978)
The Fire Within: Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft
(Werner Herzog, 2022)
F.I.S.T. (Norman Jewison, 1978)
Forbidden Zone (Richard Elfman, 1980) (rewatch)
Foregrounds (Pat O’Neill, 1978)
Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Dario Argento, 1971)
France/tour/detour/deux/enfants (Jean-Luc Godard &
Anne-Marie Mieville, 1979)
Freddy Got Fingered (Tom Green, 2001)
Freeway (Matthew Bright, 1996) (rewatch)
From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953)
From the Life of the Marionettes (Ingmar Bergman, 1980)
From the Pole to the Equator (Yervant Gianikian & Angela
Ricci Lucchi, 1987)
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller, 2024)
Galaxy of Terror (Bruce D. Clark, 1981)
The Gauntlet (Clint Eastwood, 1977)
The Georgetown Loop (Ken Jacobs, 1996)
A Girl, She Is 100% (Naoto Yamakawa, 1983) (rewatch)
Glen or Glenda (Ed Wood, 1953)
Glorious (Rebekah McKendry, 2022)
Godard Cinema (Cyril Leuthy, 2022)
The Gods of Times Square (Richard Sandler, 1999)
The Gorilla (Allan Dwan, 1939)
Graduation Day (Herb Freed, 1981)
The Greatest (Tom Gries and Monte Hellman, 1977)
Hardcore (Paul Schrader, 1979)
Harmful or Fatal if Swallowed (Manuel DeLanda, 1982)
The Hart of London (Jack Chambers, 1970) (rewatch)
Hatching (Hanna Bergholm, 2022)
Headshot (Timo Tjahjanto and Kimo Stamboel, 2016)
HealtH (Robert Altman, 1980)
Hellraiser (David Bruckner, 2022)
Hitler: A Film from Germany (Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, 1977)
Hit Man (Richard Linklater, 2023)
Hometown Prison (Richard Linklater, 2024)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sidney Lanfield, 1939)
The House of Fear (Joe May, 1939)
The House of Yes (Mark Waters, 1997)
The House that Screamed (Narciso Ibanez Serrador, 1969)
Huesera: The Bone Woman (Michelle Garza Cervera, 2022)
Huie’s Sermon (Werner Herzog, 1981)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle, 1939)
Hypochondriac (Addison Heimann, 2022)
I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Powell and Emeric
Pressburger, 1945)
India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975)
The In-Laws (Arthur Hiller, 1979)
In Our Day (Hong Sang-soo, 2023)
Island of Doomed Men (Charles Barton, 1940)
It’s a Wonderful Knife (Tyler MacIntyre, 2023)
I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (William Nigh, 1948)
Jade (William Friedkin, 1995)
Jail Bait (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973) (rewatch)
Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind (Ethan Coen, 2022)
Khrustalyov, My Car! (Aleksei German, 1998)
Kids vs. Aliens (Jason Eisener, 2022)
Killer’s Kiss (Stanley Kubrick, 1955)
The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982)(rewatch)
Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan, 2023)
The Last Metro (Francois Truffaut, 1980)
Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (Andre Ovredal, 2023)
Late Night with the Devil (Cameron and Colin Cairnes, 2023)
Lenny (Bob Fosse, 1974)
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (Connie Field, 1980)
Life Is a Dream (Raul Ruiz, 1986)
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (Djibril Diop Mambety,
1999) (rewatch)
Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill (Brian Lindstrom &
Andy Brown, 2022)
Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass, 2024)
M3GAN (Gerard Johnstone, 2022)
A Macabre Legacy (Jose Bohr, 1939)
MacArthur (Joseph Sargent, 1977)
Mahjong (Edward Yang, 1996)
Marathon Man (John Schlesinger, 1976)
Marquis de Sade’s Justine aka Deadly Sanctuary (Jess Franco,
1969)
Margaux (Steven C. Miller, 2022)
Masques (Claude Chabrol, 1987)
MaXXXine (Ti West, 2024)
Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024)
Mirror of Death (Deryn Warren, 1988)
Missile (Frederick Wiseman, 1988)
Model (Frederick Wiseman, 1981)
Monstrous (Chris Sivertson, 2022)
Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967)
Moving (Shinji Somai, 1993)
The Munsters (Rob Zombie, 2022)
Murder Psalm (Stan Brakhage, 1981) (rewatch)
My Best Friend’s Exorcism (Damon Thomas, 2022)
My Friend Ivan Lapshin (Aleksei German, 1984)
My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991) (rewatch)
Nevelson in Process (Jill Godmilow and Susan Fanshel, 1977)
Never Talk to Strangers (Peter Hall, 1995)
The New Babylon (Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg,
1929)
New York, New York (Martin Scorsese, 1977) (rewatch)
Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo, 2008)
Night and Fog in Japan (Nagisa Oshima, 1960) (rewatch)
Night Tide (Curtis Harrington, 1961)
Not a Pretty Picture (Martha Coolidge, 1976)
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
(rewatch/first-time watch of the 1988 Turner cut)
The People’s Joker (Vera Drew, 2022)
Perfect Days (Wim Wenders, 2023)
The Plot against Harry (Michael Roemer, 1969/1971/1989 (it’s
complicated)) (rewatch)
Postcards from the Edge (Mike Nichols, 1990)
The Power (Corinna Faith, 2021)
Powers of Ten (Charles and Ray Eames, 1977)
A Prince (Pierre Creton, 2023)
PussyCake (Pablo Peres, 2021)
Queen of Temple Street (Lawrence Ah Mon, 1990)
Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982)
The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995)
The Rain People (Francis Ford Coppola, 1969)
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (Jalmari Helander, 2010)
Renaldo and Clara (Bob Dylan, 1978)
Renfield (Chris McKay, 2023)
Resurrection (Andrew Semans, 2022)
The Return of Doctor X (Vincent Sherman, 1939)
The Rose King (Werner Schroeter, 1986)
Rottentail (Brian Skiba, 2018)
The Rubber Gun (Allan Moyle, 1977)
Rumours (Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, and Evan Johnson, 2024)
Run Sweetheart Run (Shana Feste, 2020)
The Sadness (Rob Jabbaz, 2021)
Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes (Jean Eustache, 1966)
Satan’s Little Helper (Jeff Lieberman, 2004)
Saw X (Kevin Greutert, 2023)
Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge (various directors,
2022)
A Sense of Loss (Marcel Ophuls, 1972)
Separated (Errol Morris, 2024)
Shame (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
She Is Conann (Bertrand Mandico, 2023)
She-Man: A Story of Fixation (Bob Clark, 1967)
Shoot the Piano Player (Francois Truffaut, 1960) (rewatch)
The Slumber Party Massacre (Amy Holden Jones, 1982)
(rewatch)
Smile (Parker Finn, 2022)
The Smiling Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac, 1923)
The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch (Noriaki Yuasa,
1968)
The Soft Skin (Francois Truffaut, 1964)
So Is This (Michael Snow, 1982) (rewatch)
Someone’s Watching Me! (John Carpenter, 1978)
Something in the Dirt (Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson,
2022)
Son of Frankenstein (Rowland V. Lee, 1939)
Sorry About the Demon (Emily Hagins, 2022)
So Vam (Alice Maio Mackay, 2021)
Standard Gauge (Morgan Fisher, 1984)
Starman (John Carpenter, 1984)
Star Spangled to Death (Ken Jacobs, 2004)
The Store (Frederick Wiseman, 1983)
Studio 666 (BJ McDonnell, 2022)
Suitable Flesh (Joe Lynch, 2023) (watched twice)
Symphony for a Sinner (George Kuchar, 1978)
Taipei Story (Edward Yang, 1985)
Talk to Me (Danny & Michael Philippou, 2022)
Tally Brown, New York (Rosa von Praunheim, 1979)
Telefon (Don Siegel, 1977)
Tempest (Paul Mazursky, 1982)
Ten Minutes to Live (Oscar Micheaux, 1932)
Ten Skies (James Benning, 2004)
Terrifier 2 (Damien Leone, 2022)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (David Blue Garcia, 2022)
Theater of Thought (Werner Herzog, 2022)
There’s Something Wrong with the Children (Roxanne Benjamin,
2023)
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) (rewatch)
THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971)
Toby Dammit (Federico Fellini, 1968) (rewatch)
Tosca’s Kiss (Daniel Schmid, 1984)
Tower of London (Rowland V. Lee, 1939)
The Toxic Avenger (Lloyd Kaufman & Michael Herz, 1984)
(rewatch)
Trailer of a Film that Will Never Exist: Phony Wars
(Jean-Luc Godard, 2023)
Trances (Clemens Klopfenstein, 1982)
Trap (M. Night Shyamalan, 2024)
A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo, 2024)
T.R. Baskin (Herbert Ross, 1971)
Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella, 2022)
Trilogy (Frank Perry, 1969)
Turkish Delight (Paul Verhoeven, 1973)
Umma (Iris K. Shim, 2022)
Unseen (Yoko Okumura, 2023)
The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987)
Vamp (Richard Wenk, 1986)
Veiled Aristocrats (Oscar Micheaux, 1932)
V/H/S/99 (various directors, 2022)
Victims of Sin (Emilio Fernandez, 1951)
Violette (Claude Chabrol, 1978)
Visible Secret (Ann Hui, 2001)
Washington: Behind Closed Doors (Gary Nelson, 1977)
Welfare (Frederick Wiseman, 1975)
When Evil Lurks (Demian Rugna, 2023)
When Strangers Marry (William Castle, 1944)
Winter Kills (William Richert, 1979) (watched twice)
Wise Blood (John Huston, 1979)
Witchhammer (Otakar Vavra, 1970)
Woman Is the Future of Man (Hong Sang-soo, 2004)
Woman of Tokyo (Yasujiro Ozu, 1933)
A Wounded Fawn (Travis Stevens, 2022)
Yeast (Mary Bronstein, 2008)
Youth Without Youth (Francis Ford Coppola, 2007)
Zandy’s Bride (Jan Troell, 1974)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023) (watched twice)
