Quarantine Filmz

[jenkins]

Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore--oh shit, like what happened with Vinegar through In the Cold of the Night, this one movie justifies the entire AGFA enterprise. like what often happens when i don't think to trust the distributor, when i have my personal doubts, it turned out that this isn't a guilty pleasure but a remarkable piece of DIY cinema. it's way smarter than i would have guessed. i thought it would be somebody who hadn't figured things out but this is so figured out. its cinematic grammar, shall we say, is sound. and it has an impressive strong female voice. Sarah Jacobson was the writer, director, cinematographer, and editor. shoutout to the also-remarkable I Was a Teenage Serial Killer

subsequent to this viewing, i immediately ordered Effects (a meta-enhanced takedown on the philosophy of horror that doubles as a sleazy and terrifying movie on its own) and have plans to watch Godmonster of Indian Flats tonight

[jenkins]

Godmonster of Indian Flats—Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore was a better intro to AGFA as this one has some stuff but also validates streaming, would not need to own this

[jenkins]

The Violent Years—57min. female gang movie written by ed wood. shot in florida. “the party is over, but the night is just beginning.” when bad taste feels good

[jenkins]

Who Killed Captain Alex—a cool thing to watch

Welcome to Wakaliwood, Uganda: home of “DA BEST OF DA BEST MOVIES!” and the vanguards of DIY commando cinema! Under the guidance of writer-director-producer Nabwana Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey (IGG) and with producer-star Alan Ssali Hofmanis, this crack crew of self-taught filmmakers and martial arts aficionados produce dozens of gonzo action films in the Kampala ghetto with budgets that rarely exceed $200 USD. Utilizing scrap parts to build computers, machine guns, and a full-sized Huey helicopter, these real-life superheroes inspire more heart, imagination, and soul than a thousand Hollywood blockbusters. AGFA is proud to bring two of the most reckless, out-of-control brain-blasts in the Wakaliwood canon to home video for the first time ever -- WHO KILLED CAPTAIN ALEX and BAD BLACK! And in Uganda's finest storytelling tradition, the films are complemented by the acerbic wit of narrator/VJ (Video Joker) VJ Emmie, who sums up the Wakaliwood experience with a single sentiment: “It is a love story . . . LOVE OF ACTION!”

the vj part is extraordinary and i’m thankful to having been exposed to it. so it’s like the commentary track is part of the movie. it’s if mystery science theater was both friendly and part of the filmmaking. the vj provides outside context about the movie and also sometimes supplies the sound effects, e.g. the vj will vocalize the sound of a neck snap

[jenkins]

Actress—oh hello, Robert Greene. it’s the kind of shit i like: life as art as life

[jenkins]

Effects—i adored this movie

[WorldForgot]

Feels Good Man - A scary doc about disinformation thru memez, on our lack of control over whatever we post on the net. Even if we created it - once it's online, it belongs to everyone. Cool Boys' Club animations from Lisa Hanawalt.

Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN II - Quicker on its feet than the first, but also a bit less interesting for all its fun brutality. Whatever, plots are for dead people, poreface.

Scout Taylor-Compton's performance in both these filmz as Laurie Strode iz powerhouse scream queen work, imo. Watching her unravel alongside Michaels "homeward" bound mission iz eerie - and I really adore how Zombie uses horror red-herrings as part of the character's psychological state. Genre and perception as illusionz. For us House of 1000 Corpses fanz, Chris Hardwicke roasts Loomis alongside Weird Al.

Weird Fiction - Did I post about this one yet? A No-Budget, totally DIY horror anthology by Jacob Perret. Really endearing, and as a filmmaker without financing it's inspiring, too. 

[jenkins]

Cry-Baby—some of it slaps so hard. some real smacks in here. Hairspray changed the path of his movies and everybody knows that. you see this on the horizon with Polyester, which preludes Serial Mom, but john waters as a movie-movie-movie man began with Hairspray. here are Johnny depp and iggy pop and i’m such a fan of the alphabet bomber story. The final song is my favorite

[jenkins]

City of Pirates--it's so fully realized, so fully accomplished, so fully imagined, and so outside the regular. the internal logic here is comprehensible and utterly human despite the movie behaving so unlike reality. Raoul Ruiz the writer and director here, my my my. when wanting to describe him i shall defer to the beginning of his imdb biography, "one of the most exciting and innovative filmmakers to emerge from 1960s World Cinema, providing more intellectual fun and artistic experimentation, shot for shot, than any filmmaker since Jean-Luc Godard." how impressive that is: a lot. very. mucho. this is the fourth film of his i've seen and i mean as with Godard there is a constant state of intellectualism that can cause the movie to feel lifeless, when of course it is exploring the chambers of the soul, which is where life comes from. i heard it said like this recently: we don't have a soul, we are a soul, and we have a body

wf passed on to us the youtube location of this movie

[jenkins]

Sleeping Beauty—toward the end of the movie i realized i’d seen the movie but it took me that long to remember. my guess is that when i first saw it i thought “here i am watching this acclaimed high brow erotic movie idgaf about” but now i gave a fuck about it. it creates an alternate reality and also i used to be harder on certain alternate realities maybe sure. or this isn’t even an alternate reality so much as a specific reality and that’s what i meant

[Alma]

Sleeping Beauty—toward the end of the movie i realized i’d seen the movie but it took me that long to remember. my guess is that when i first saw it i thought “here i am watching this acclaimed high brow erotic movie idgaf about” but now i gave a fuck about it. it creates an alternate reality and also i used to be harder on certain alternate realities maybe sure. or this isn’t even an alternate reality so much as a specific reality and that’s what i meant

I love this film. It actually got pretty bad reviews when it came out at Cannes, and the director hasn't made another film since. I thought it was really well done though.

[jenkins]

Thank You and Good Night—i wouldn't call it a documentary. i would call it an autobiographical movie. although it's not biographical so much as a documentation of the final days in the life of the filmmaker's grandmother, and reflections upon family and death, still i think what's most being exposed is the filmmaker, in a really lovely way. death, you know, it isn't fun, and some of this movie is quite heavy, like a large part of it, but it's well done and inspiring in its own right. one might not call death inspiring but that's what i would call this movie

[jenkins]

Lightning Over Braddock: A Rustbowl Fantasy—not such a huge fan of this movie that there's kind of a lot to talk about in reference to. i wouldn't call it a documentary i'd call it autobiographical, except it also has fictive elements. it almost does a great job except i think it muddles the ephemeral and the eternal. so apparently Werner Herzog hyped filmmaker Tony Buba and bolstered his career, which i know because it's repeatedly mentioned. although it isn't explained who Herzog is. of course i know who Herzog is, but i'm not sure why the movie wouldn't provide context. it's set outside of Pittsburgh and another name mentioned is Pittsburgh heavyweight George Romero. it just so happens that Tony Buba's brother, Pasquale Buba, first edited my-above-mentioned Effects, then went on to edit Knightriders and Day of the Dead and was one of the editors of Heat even. but so Tony Buba repeatedly mentions how he wanted to stay around Pittsburgh in order to be a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond. he mentions how the collapse of the steel industry led to the collapse of his hometown Braddock and also the rise of his own career. because the media became interested in doomed steel towns the media became interested in Tony because he was making documentaries about a doomed steel town. he tells us this. a lot of what is described is what you hear today: the boomer generation had lower life comfort than their parents' generation and factory jobs were being sent overseas and what the hell were people supposed to do and things like that. there's a sidestory that's based on a true story (i suppose) about a person from an earlier documentary becoming obsessed with the success of Tony. this person plays himself in the movie and thus it is reality inspired fiction and works well. there's a lot going on in this movie and i just wish the movie wasn't so obsessed with itself

[jenkins]

The Blob -- I watched it at the right time. after all it is just The Blob. however much you love or hate it it's The Blob. I felt really moved by it. the sincerity of the absurdity is the key. sergeant Bert, or Bert the Schmert as the teenagers call him, is a paranoid individual suffering from PTSD after serving in the war. as in, it's not a reasonable person who finds the teenagers suspicious. now I'm not going to lie and say this movie fully operates on sound reasoning, I just mentioned a thing. how in the hell the blob kills 50 people in the movie theater is beyond my understanding. also, as a teenager of today would say, the ending is deadass lit. it's so preposterous but this is these people's lives. what a wonderful actor Steve McQueen is. his lip biting and his look of compassionate concentration. what a good and honest person he appears to be, as his father notes about his character. how does this movie remain modern in any way? why it remains ultra-modern in a very intense way

[putneyswipe]

While watching the excellent Silent Partner (1978) on the criterion channel - which I would highly recommend to anyone here who hasn’t seen it, I noticed a similarity with another Canadian film that was released a year earlier, Rabid (1977). Both films strangely include shootouts in malls that involve Santas...

The Silent Partner


Rabid


Coincidence or in-joke?