Play It Again, Sam

I’ve seen this before — like, in the early 80s? On VHS? But I always thought this was a Woody Allen movie, but he’s just an actor in this one?

“>Oh! He wrote it, too? That makes more sense. So then I wonder what the story behind this is — the studio just didn’t trust him to direct anything, so they got a different director in to oversee everything?

I mean, there’s even Diana Keaton…

Right, Herbert Ross has directed a whole bunch of funny and crowd-pleasing movies.

The movie is really funny, but it is difficult getting into this movie because you know too much about Allen these days. And this movie makes it even harder, because his character’s name is “Allan”, so the identification between character and actor is, like, 100%. And him being this nebbish guy just doesn’t quite work because of what you now know.

Could the twist be that Woody’s character ends up with Keaton’s character!?

I’ve been there!

I think.

This is a really funny movie. The main problem is perhaps the guy playing Bogart? He just does an awful Bogart.

I guess this movie has kinda been slightly forgotten… while most Allen movies are available on bluray, for instance, this is DVD only.

But it’s fun. If you’re able to ignore, er, like, everything and just watch the movie. Which is difficult, but.

Play It Again, Sam. Herbert Ross. 1972. ⚄

Night Moves

Well, that’s a way to introduce a character.

Heh heh.

These shots from American movies are absurdly romantic.

This movie is fantastic! I have no idea where anything is going, but the look of the movie… the way it moves… the humour…

Hey! It’s whatsisface!

Like so many of these 70s movies I’m watching because Hazel Flagg said so, the names involved are so familiar, but then I look them up and realise that I’ve seen almost nothing they’ve made.

Arthur Penn? Is he the father of Sean? Kinda looks similar… But I’ve seem probably just one of his movies — Bonnie and Clyde.

He apparently didn’t manage to get a lot of movies made — like one every three years between 1958 and 1987.

Hey! It’s that guy!

Some of these choices are downright weird — like filming her in these scenes without a bunch of reflectors to light up her face…

This was really enjoyable… the plot was kinda er vague? But in a good way.

Night Moves. Arthur Penn. 1975. ⚄

A Confucian Confusion

Oh, why did I buy this anyway? I don’t really like Edward Yang’s movies? … Oh! I think I bought this by mistake… I was thinking about some other director with a similarly structured name… err… Oh! Wayne Wang!? Yeah, I kinda liked a couple of his movies, but…

I don’t think that’s who I was thinking about, either.

Anyway, now I’m watching this, I guess.

This movie has a really frenetic pacing, and that that feels fresh? But the performances are like “ehh?” They’re not over the top in a fun way, but just unconvincing. I guess it’s meant to be a satire, but it’s just hard to tell — it just feels inept.

But I like the general look of the movie…

I really like the way this movie is lit. So pretty.

But it’s just… almost every scene is So Much Drama. And not in a fun way, either, but in a I Don’t Know What I’m Doing way.

This movie is so annoying. Even it it’s meant to be a satire, it’s not funny at all, and it doesn’t work as a drama either.

At no point in this movie did I have any interest whatsoever in what was happening on the screen. I can’t remember when I’ve been this disinterested in a movie before. It just seemed like random lines of dialogue strung together by actors who were over acting all the time.

So I’m totally open to the possibility that it’s just me — that I didn’t understand at all what this movie was about.

But I think it’s more likely that this movie just sucked.

I was going to give this movie a ⚂ because I really enjoyed the cinematography and the set designs, but then the last third of the movie happened, and:

A Confucian Confusion. Edward Yang. 1994. ⚁