Matt Conroy's movie log

An early Jean Harlow film, with Mae Clarke and Marie Prevost. Not bad. I'm not a Jean Harlow fan, but I haven't seen all that many of her movies. I thought she was quite good in this, though Mae Clarke is a far better actor, and more attractive, I think.

An okay documentary about the Sex Pistols.

An unusual documentary, about which I cannot remember much as I write this (In October 2009).

Nicely made, inspiring documentary about the Garmin professional cycling team.

Directed by Ingmar Bergman. I cannot remember much about this, now that I am writing this in October 2009. Oh well.

The first five minutes of the film are quite moving, and then it's rather boring for a long stretch, a bit poignant when the goal is achieved. It's nice to see digital textures had improved since, say, Toy Story. I was disappointed that the Muntz character never got redemption. He could have returned with the others, and with evidence to prove him correct. The filmmakers chose to make him just a tad too evil, and so had to meet a different end.

The 3-D effect was very impressive, for the first twenty minutes or so. It seemed to wear off.

Not really a comedy, this film covers a bunch of very serious topics (e.g. illness, suicide, failure), with excellent bits of comedy sprinkled in. Billy Burke and Marie Dressler are both excellent in this.

More entertaining than I expected it to be. The characters of Papageno and Papagena were my favorites (Elisabeth Erikson is adorable).

A movie about too much. It is overloaded with ideas, so each gets short shrift. Much cleverness, and lots of poignantness, but too many ideas are undercooked.

A light movie, amusing enough, with bits of cleverness. Rebecca Pidgeon is a cutie, and she has a particular acting style which I quite like.

This movie seems to me to be about the weighing of expectations (in the probabilistic sense), and the balancing of costs. The nun wants to protect the children of the school; she gives this essentially infinite value against the cost to the priest of losing his position, reputation, etc. With this assignment of values, any non-zero probability of guilt on the part of the priest is sufficient for the nun to take action to remove him. But do we place this infinite value on the children's safety? Is that reasonable? Is it reasonable to ever assign infinite value to anything?

Well acted, of course, by all.

Another Bergman film. Lots of sadness, and meanness. For me this is noteable as it's the first Bergman film in which I really liked Liv Ullmann's character.

A bit of an odd film interpretation of the great novel. Peter Lorre is excellent, but his accent is at odds with the rest of his family on this, who talk in a completely different way. Marian Marsh is gorgeous.

I really didn't like this all that much, and I think over time I will be unable to distinguish this from Shame in my memory.

An intense, as usual, Bergman film. Well done, but not as moving as I thought it would be.

Atrocious.

Not very good. Bill argues with people who are unprepared and not worthy of argumentation (e.g., the Jesus actor). Generally uneven and sloppily made.

Ah, an odd film. Supposedly a "gothic horror" film, I'm not sure it lives up to that classification. Rather Fellini-esque in some ways, generally mysterious happenings, mostly it just seems that Max's character is going mad. Overall, not really interesting enough. One of my least favorite Bergman's so far.

Surprisingly moving ending with this one, which, for most of the film, is somewhat lacking. Maj-Britt Nilsson, and her character, are quite good.

An intriguing film, with great acting.

I watched the 3-hour DVD version; I may have to consider getting my hands on the full 5-hour miniseries version. This was quite good, engrossing, with very nice bits throughout. The supernatural elements are a nice addition I haven't seen much in Bergman's films.

I have a tendency to not like hollywood biopics (e.g. Ray, Kinsey), but this was great. I often feel like I'd rather read a more detailed biography than watch a watered down version of a person's life, but this film is nicely focused on a relatively short period of Harvey Milk's life, so perhaps that is why it works better than other biopics.

An excellent film, and good reminder of how slowly the world progresses.

A impressive silent film with a rather powerful, moving ending.

A very good film, but very brutal and very sad. War hurts people in many ways, perhaps every way.

I like the bit where Eva says that sometimes she feels like she is in a dream, but not her dream, someone else's dream; she asks, what will happen to us when they wake up and are ashamed?

An excellent film documenting one of the greatest events of all time.

Arggh! A terrible Bergman film. Really not good, with bad acting, and dialogue all over the place. Disjointed, sloppy, awful. Plus, depressing.

A messy, absurb anti-war film. Quite good.

A film version of my very favorite novel. It is well done for the most part. The cinematography is excellent, and the film doesn't look like it was made in 1966: it feels very modern, production-wise.

A sad little story with a hopeful ending. Good actors. Directed by Ingmar Bergman.

A nicely sordid story. Charles Laughton plays this like a crazy person.

I thought this would be more censorable than it was. It was rather tame, but well done. Directed by Mai Zetterilng, but quite Bergman-ish.

Engaging courtroom drama. Good writing, acting. (This was the second in my 4/30/09 "blank of a blank" double feature.)

Entertaining. Nice ending. Joseph Cotten is a little over-the-top in places (what if someone acted totally crazy, and nobody noticed?).

I was surprised that this was so much like My Fair Lady. Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller are awesome.

Another early Bergman. Not so good. This has lots of irrational behavior, never explained, which made it difficult for me to understand the characters. I find this happens in the Bergman's I don't like much. Perhaps I'm missing something.

Creative editing and directing made this hold my attention. I really don't like James Garner's acting, though. Ever.

First film directed fully by Ingmar Bergman. Not bad. Lead is played by Inga Landgre, who appears in The Seventh Seal as Block's wife.

Screenplay by Ingmar Bergman, directed by Alf Sjoberg. Quite good.

Nicely absurd, but not great.

Hmmm. My least favorite Tati film I've seen so far.

Not my usual favorite kind of film, but this was quite good. Betty Schneider has a little part in this.

A good film, though I was disappointed with the ending. Julie Christie is particularly good in this.

I usually like Alec Guinness films. This one is quite a sad little film. I would say it's about the consequences of not treating people as people, the consequences of being mean-hearted. Probably good to be reminded occasionally.

Possibly the first Bergman film I ever saw. It didn't make much of an impression the first time, but I liked it very much this time. Lots to think about.

A Bergman film I'd not seen before. Intense, I like it. Actually has nudity and sexual content, which I've not seen in Bergman's stuff. Covers much of the same ground as other of his films: sickness, death, isolation.

Watched this again after Tivo "suggested it". Another film that depends quite a bit on its time. It is hard for me to fathom how opposed people could be to interracial marriage.

As Jenni pointed out, Spencer Tracy's final speech unfortunately steals the movie away from the two characters that it should be about. Old white men run everything, even this film. Some very funny bits, though.

Excellent all-round, very funny and clever. Rosalind Russell is fantastic. Paulette Goddard, too.

Another Jacques Tati, and one of his most famous. Nothing much happens for long stretches, yet the film kept my attention (mostly). Definitely has that "life through filters" feeling.

Now here's an interesting film. Lots left ambiguous. Not bad.

Oh, I like Tina Fey quite a bit. Film's not very good, but it's cleverer than I expected it to be.

I like Alec Guinness, but I did not like this film.

An odd, rather bad movie. Potentially interesting premise, but characters are mostly mean idiots.

A not-dull Bette Davis pic with a nice twist at the end.

A rather fascinating Jacques Tati film. Very nicely done in many ways, though ultimately has that usual Tati feeling: autistic, or some such thing, as though Tati lives life through a strange set of filters, not quite experiencing everything. Betty Schneider is adorable.

A story about anti-fascists, so it can't be all bad. Paul Lukas is very good in this, along with Bette Davis.

A very good looking film, and an interesting story. I continue to be amazed at what people can deal with.

I watched this because of Bette Davis, but it's not very good.

Quite well made documentary about people trying to get, or hold onto, a little fame, and other things.

We saw this play in NYC over Christmas, so we thought we'd watch the film version. It's not terribly good. It's not as sharp as the play: there are quite a few questionable tweaks in the film that muddy things in a direction that weakens the story.

Excellent film about the big compromise required to live in the world. Jason Robards is great as the guy trying to stay true to himself. Barbara Harris is awesome as a woman awakening to a better way of viewing her existence. Great acting and writing all around, excellent cinematography, editing, use of music. Terrific.

Very well-made, well acted, excellently filmed suspense movie about a scientist who tries to blackmail Britain into stopping nuclear weapons development. Ultimately a bit lacking. For instance, there is no mention of Britain giving in to the demand, not even a scene where they consider it. This leaves the film a little ambiguous, but mostly just incomplete. The scientist is definitely portrayed as sympathetic, so it's not exactly pro-nuclear.

Excellent secondary characters and details. Sheila Manahan is rather a cutie as the scientist's daughter, and Joan Hickson and Olive Sloane are both great.

Historically interesting film with lots of missing footage.

I like the premise of this quite a bit, but the writing and acting aren't great. Melvyn Douglas in particular doesn't seem believable.

Despite being listed as a musical, this is not one, in the sense that the characters do not break into song. Reasonanly entertaining.

A pretty good film, treating the underpayment of professors and the clergy in the context of a romance. Directed by Lois Weber.

This is one of those films I probably saw at a very early age, so I was curious to see it again, and mildly surprised that it is awful. Just dreadful! It is not funny, and, for a movie intended for kids, it is boring - watching it was sheer drudgery.

A fantastic, powerful film. One of the best.

I don't generally watch horror films, especially modern ones, but Tivo's plot synopsis was too intriguing to pass up: something about a derelict biker who turns into a giant turkey.

I think this film highlights the multidimensionality of film goodness (or badness). While terrible in almost every sense of the word, this film has a certain compelling component that is hard to put one's finger on. It's interesting at least for that.

I love this film, and see it every year. This year, Jenni and I watched it on Christmas at home.

Directed by Frank Capra.

Good, though not too memorable (as I write this a week or two later). Directed by G. W. Pabst.

A good, early silent film based on the Emile Zola novel. Berthe Bovy, as La Trouille, and Germain Rouer, as Francoise, are both very good in this.

Jenni and I watched this late at night after coming home from seeing the play performed by Seattle Repertory Theatre. Both were great. I think I might like the play better: the film adds a lot of elements to it that I don't are necessary, but it's still quite good.

Directed by Frank Capra.

Rather engrossing suspense/crime drama about a kidnapping. Lots of nice details.

Directed by Akira Kurosawa.

Very good. Good acting throughout, good writing, fine message, some great monologues. A more abrupt ending than I would have liked, but that's common with older films.

Directed by Frank Capra.

A sad, well-made film. It is hard for me to appreciate the feelings one would have as a Japanese person who lived through the bombings of Japan. Like A Wonderful Sunday, this film relies, I think, on cerain cultural feelings that I lack.

Directed by Akira Kurosawa.

I like the concept of this film a lot, but I think the film relies a lot on the audience having a similar experience. I don't know much about post-war Japan, and certainly have never suffered as these characters have. I felt I lacked the appropriate emotional sympathy for them: I could intellectually feel for them, but emotionally I wasn't moved. I kept wanting the actors to say more, perhaps to fill in the gaps in my emotional connections.

Directed by Akira Kurosawa.

An odd, not very good film about a librarian who is asked to remove a "communist" book (it's titled "The Communist Dream", which, as far as I can tell, is not the title of any actual book) from her shelves. She does, and all hell breaks loose. Some poor acting and writing here, though Bette Davis does her best. At one point she utters a line like "I'd like to taste a nutburger before I die" (as part of her explanation of why she wants to move to California).

A classic, and not bad in parts, but overall I didn't care very much for the characters. Bette Davis is quite good in this.

An earlier Frank Capra film. I really liked it. At this point, I think I would have to place Frank Capra as my second favorite director, only behind Jean Jeunet.

This film had good characters, and lots of good writing. Very hopeful and happy ending. Curiously, it was remade in 1961 as "Pocketful of Miracles" by Capra himself. I wonder why.

I have a place in my heart for 60s psychedelic movies. I'm not sure why. I like hippies, and psychotropic drugs, free love, and, of course, peace. Perhaps more important, I like the idea of these things.

This movie, starring a 30 year old Susan Strasberg as a 17 year old runaway, is not as good as some others of the genre, e.g. The Trip. But, my brain was a bit fried from a week of not enough sleep and tedious work, and staring at this for a while seemed to help.

Excellent! Very moving, great, great film.

An excellent film about escapees from a German concentration camp. Hume Cronyn is fantastic in this, and Spencer Tracy is his usual excellent.

An engrossing Japanese film about women who kill wandering soldiers in order to sell their armor and weapons for food. Well-directed and acted.

Ugh. A rather dull David Lean picture. Why'd I watch it? It is based on a novel by H. G. Wells, which, from the desciption of it, sounds like a much better story. Wells was very pro-feminism, and often wrote about how women freedoms are severly limited, economically and socially. That is only mildly addressed in the film (perhaps not at all, and I'm just "reading between the lines" from a Wellsian view).

There is one good three second shot of a landing gear wheel on a plane. The shot shows it not rotating, just above the ground, and then hitting the ground and spinning rapidly as the plane touches down. Cool.

Once again, a Tennessee Williams adaptation that was pretty much nothing like what I expected. I expected somethign taudry and lurid, lots of jealousy and, you know, "unbridled passion". This was not that at all. As usual, I don't really know where I got that impression; maybe some trailer or poster I saw long ago, or maybe it's just that Ava Gardner is in it.

What this film is is very good, nicely complex, with several interesting characters. The acting is great. It is surprisingly a bit heart-warming.

A solid, amusing Charlie Chaplin film. I was surprised to find Charlie acting like a bad-ass through most of the film: not really what he is known for (is it?).

There is a brief scene in which Charlie reads another soldier's letter over the soldier's shoulder, and their expressions show the same reactions to various parts of the letter. Nicely done.

Superbly well directed and acted. I'm very impressed. A very sad story, though.

One quibble: I watched it on my laptop with headphones, and some of the atmospheric sound seemed rather "tacked on", as though someone was trying to make it come to life through sound effects. In particular, there are carts rolling across cobblestones in at least two places that just didn't sound right. Maybe without headphones it sounds okay.

Excellent! The best movie I've seen in some time! The story line is not what you might think from the plot synopsis (a young man buys a sex doll and treats it like a real person; his family and the community respond). The film is moving, and sad, and joyful, and superbly well-acted and directed.

This was only so-so. I really like Karen Morley; I wish she had played a bigger role in this.

This was more entertaining than I expected it to be.

I love this movie.

And, stupid as this may seem, I have yet to read the book. Soon.

This is not the movie I expected it to be. For some reason, I thought this movie would be a languid, southern romance kind of thing. To put it lightly, it is not. Very restricted by mores of the time it was written and produced, the story would get a very different treatment now.

I've not seen Elizabeth Taylor in many films. She is not bad in this, and the rest of the cast do a decent job.

I always want to really like Fellini films. This one I did not find to be very good. I love the concept: a great director showing us the city he loves. But the result was actually somewhat boring.

One thing I realized while watching this is that Fellini films often sound terrible, and this one definitely does. Almost all the sound seems to have been recorded separately, with no attempt to capture the ambient sound of the scene, or the reverberation properly fitting the environment, and with little effort at syncing.

An odd film, played fairly well by the leads. The scenes between Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel are the best.

Really terrible score.

Excellent - I really enjoyed it. Moving at times, too. Bette Davis is great and beautiful in this.

A cult classic that I've often heard of, but not seen before now. Quit bad as expected, but campy and silly almost to the point of being worthwhile. The sped-up film of the cars racing is very cheesy.

Another well-made, sad film. Very nice cinematography throughout. Anne Bancroft is very good.

Excellent. A reminder of how difficult life is, generally.

I've liked Lon Chaney in quite a few films. This one was just okay.

Roman Polanski has made some good films, I think. This dreadful thing is not one of them.

Not a particularly good film. Mildly amusing here and there, but mostly dull, slow moving and uninspired.

Good, interesting direction and writing. I liked it.

A very short, minimal film. Well done.

Excellent! I loved this silent, soviet film. Would make a great double feature with Koyannisquatsi (or Keaton's The Cameraman, for a different effect).

Locally excellent, globally just okay. Very nicely directed, looks nice (beautiful, at times), sounds good, good characters and dialogue. But overall, just lacked something to make me really like it.

A very enjoyable film with excellent direction and tone. It is quite long, and I had intended to watch it in multiple sittings, but I started watching and ended up seeing the whole thing. I liked the characters; the acting is very good throughout. I like the "go for the gusto/grab things when you can" message.

A good, but not great movie. Jane Wyman is good in this, but some of the other acting is not well done. Lew Ayres in particular acts in a very unconvincing, over-the-top style.

I don't understand the title. The main character, played by Jane Wyman, is Belinda, and she has a child, who she names Johnny. Why these two names are stuck together and used for the title of the film is never made clear. Perhaps the play would shed some light on this?

Wow, this was terrible. While Garbo is a fine actress, this movie does not do her justice at all. The writing is uninspired, and Melvyn Douglas' acting is dreadful. I don't believe for a second that he is in love with Ninotchka.

While I understand the constraints of the time it was shot, this film would have been so much better had it been shot in Paris and Moscow, and really contrasted the two cities and their ways of life. As it is, it is all caricature and stereotype. The film could have shown the complexity of the appeals of each city, and could have shown the fine character transformations that one could believe would come about in people coming to Paris for the first time from the Soviet Union. Plus, the whole "romance" aspect needs a compete rewrite.

Another solid film from Michael Moore.

I was hoping for so much more from this Bunuel film. Certainly important, and it made quite a splash at the time, it now seems very tame, and, yes, dull. The toe-sucking scene is the most interesting.

An intense, sad, moving film by Bergman. It is excellent, but it is not pleasant.

Pretty good film. Jenni and I have a very good friend who is a pastry chef, and a superb pie maker, so I thought a lot of her during this film. While this is not in itself a sad film, it is hard to separate it from the story of Adrienne Shelly, who wrote, directed and acted in it.

An excellent film. Lots of amazing camera work and impressive large scale war scenes and what seem like quite dangerous stunts. Plus, Clara Bow is fantastic.

I wanted to really like this, but I found it mostly uninteresting. Nicole Stephane is rather engrossing, but I was always hoping for more.

Poor use of music throughout: it swells unnecessarily and often.

This movie is awesome! Very Fritz Lang-y (and some of his films aren't so). Fantastic concept, acting and style.

TCM is always showing this film, and I had a hankering for a Bette Davis film, so I watched it. It's a very silly thing, without much seriousness at all, but it's fairly amusing. Jimmy Durante shows up near the end and says to Mary Wickes something along the lines of "Come up to my room in half and hour, and bring some rye bread!" (he says it all lascivious like, without any suggestion of lunching, so it's pretty amusing and absurd).

I remember liking the 1992 version for some reason, so I thought I'd watch this. It's not very good. It starts pretty well, but there is no substantial clearing up of the issues with the men in the film, so it's just rather...nothing.

A very good silent film. There is ambition, then tragedy (rather surprisingly brutal), and then love seems to triumph. Good acting. I'm always intrigued by shots of cities in old films: how different and how similar they look to their modern selves.

Our Tivo just recorded this without our asking for it, as it does. We started watching it, and found it engrossing enough that we watched the whole thing. It's not bad at all: some good writing and acting, smartly done. Michelle Williams is excellent, and very cute.

At least the second time I've seen this. Excellent.

Rather over the top, and unrealistic in a number of ways. Good acting, though.

A particular problem is the ending: it seems that with the removal of two students from the class, all difficulties are solved? Hmmm.

So, I watched this because Jenni and Pam were watching it where I normally eat dinner. Some funny bits of writing, and decent acting at times, but overall: just terrible. No pizazz, no good character development, no texture. I especially dislike the way the woman decides to have the baby, with no explanation for how she came to that decision; it seems like rather an anti-abortion sentiment and anti-feminist to not show her even considering the possibilities and coming to a decision. (Yes, of course, this is a comedy, and abortions aren't funny, but neither is childbirth.)

A very touching, thought-provoking, well-acted, well-directed film. Just great. I cried not a little.

Directed by John Cassavetes.

Excellent. This film has a fantastic look, and a great, very human story, told with terrific acting.

Directed by Rainer Fassbinder.

I like this film's premise quite a lot, and it is performed extremely well by Tom Hanks. The kid's mom's (Merceded Ruehl) anguish is a bit underplayed: that is, it is clearly horrible, but not much is made of it. I wonder what the film would have been like if the kid's home situation was more like that of the kid in Time Bandits or Otto's in Repo Man? The music is just awful: I wonder if, in fifty years or so, people will start re-releasing late 20th century films with updated soundtracks, the way, e.g., Alloy Orchestra does updates of silent movie soundtracks?

Directed by Penny Marshall.

I don't know. This film has very nice cinematography, and it's always nice to see cities one hasn't seen much of, but the plot here is negligible, as is the character development, dialogue, and acting: there is simply nothing here worth the viewing. Also, like A Taste of Cherry, there is nil humor in this film, and I don't think that bodes well for my liking this director's movies (I would say that to lack humor is to lack a sense of humanity, but that might sound pretentious).

Directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou.

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Directed by Max Ophuls.

The subtitles were atrocious. I definitely wouldn't mind seeing the film again with better subtitles.

Directed by Roberto Rossellini.

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.

Directed by Sergio Leone.

A beautiful but sad film, with a lot of ambiguity. Some very sinister goings on, and uncertain futures for the two main characters. I'm still unclear about what was going on at the Albanian border.

I've wanted to see Stan Brakhage's films for a long time. When I was at the University of Colorado, there were opportunities to see his work, but I never did. This collection has a whole bunch of his films on two DVDs, so I feel like I got a good dose.

I am extremely pro-experiment, in basically everything. A lot of the films in this collection were too similar to each other, and too similar to themselves: that is, any two seconds of a film is often indistinguishable from any other two second chunk of the film. Each frame looks fantastic, a little abstract painted masterpiece, but when they are run together I find I can't discern much, and it quickly got tiring.

To me, easily the best film is Window Water Baby Moving, which is the best film of a birth I've ever seen.

The collection does contain "Dog Star Man", which is the one I really wanted to see, but I, sadly, didn't think much of it.

I love the Tarzan concept. I'd love to spend my life swinging in the trees, protecting the animals from nasty white hunters. But this movie is not good. And it's brutal: from the hippopotami being indiscriminately massacred, to the fellow falling to his death off the ledge where Jane falls but doesn't die thanks to a safety rope, to the killing of Tarzan's ape mother (I think...), this movie treats death way too lightly.

Maureen O'Sullivan and Johnny Weismuller are good in their parts.

Finally got around to seeing this. I love "It's a Wonderful Life", and this has much in common with it: numerous members of the cast, Frank Capra, and Auld Lang Syne is played (here near the beginning versus at the end of IWL).

Overall, a pretty good film, and worth seeing just for its cultural influence. There is some bad editing in places, where you can see different takes were spliced together. Some good acting. I especially like the scene with Thomas Mitchell's character at the press club.

There is surprising (from a film point of view) violence involving children which makes the ending especially dramatic. The ending is very abrupt, as often happens with older films. I really would have liked to have seen a little wrap-up.