Fuuuck! This bluray has been cut down to 16:9?

Well, that’s weird, but it’s not 16:9 in any case.

Boo!

Criterion! What the actual fuck!

Greatest actor ever.

Oh yeah… he wrote a number of things around this time that were all pretty spiffy, if I remember correctly? Or I might be.

I was pretty sure that I saw this at the time, but nothing here seems familiar… weird…

Heh heh. So meta.

Look at those colours. That lighting.

Just look at this.

This movie made a million European film nerds want to visit Texas.

Everything here looks just amazing — you can almost see the nine assistants standing just off camera with reflectors and stuff just to get this perfect light for this tiny shot. No modern movie looks like, what with the desaturation and digital cameras and GET OFF MY LAWN

Claire Denis worked on this, and I wonder how much input she had. Because some of these shots look quite Denis-ey.

I hope the Texas Tourist Board chipped in.

Bizarre.

Only Europeans make the US look this good.

That’s John Lurie!!!

That’s Nastassja Kinski!!!

Oh my god. Movies were so much prettier before digital colour grading.

This is such a gorgeous movie. And it’s kinda perfect until the final bits? But when we get to the monologue in the booth, it starts to feel as it’s flailing a bit?

But still. It’s a great movie.

Paris, Texas. Wim Wenders. 1984. ⚅

Oops. The other Alun Owen 30 minute dramas have mostly been kinda awkward. But this is even earlier than the others?

This is excruciating.

I think it might be the worst one of these, and hopefully it’s the last one on this box set?

It’s like a parody of one of these things.

George’s Room. Alan Clarke. 1967. ⚀

Nooo! The bluray has been cut down to 16:9! (From 1.85:1.) Whyy!

*pout*

Anyway, I’m still sorta continuing my 80s arthouse movie blog series here, but skipping a bit ahead. In the early days, Branagh’s movies were shown in the Cinematheques — starting with his Henry V movie, he was sort of considered a serious director. I guess that lasted until 1994, when he did his Frankenstein?

But I’m skipping a bit ahead, just because I wanted to (re-)watch this movie now. I think I’ve seen it before, but I’m not quite sure.

The black and white is an arty choice.

Colour!!!

I love Emma Thompson. Did Branagh’s movies start sucking when they got divorced?

Yup; checks out.

Hey!

It took a while before I realised that Branagh is trying to do a US dialect.

This movie has all of the British actors!

But it’s just a bit… mawkish? I mean, it’s a goofy, amusing movie, but you feel Branagh’s ambitions — and it sorta falls short. Like in this shot, which looks great, but it’s so incongruous. It screams “look! somebody on the set can do lighting!” And it’s the same with the camera movements — they do all the possible camera movements — dollying around people, swivelling from one to the other and back again, etc etc. It’s like Branagh’s cinematographer is going through a list of fun things they could do.

But botching up quite a lot of them. Or rather — not getting them quite right.

And it’s not a tiny budget either — modest perhaps for all the stuff they want to do?

It’s a fun little movie — all noirish in parts, and properly Hitchcockian in parts. My main problem with this is really the performances — Branagh himself, of course, but many of the smaller parts just don’t quite work. Derek Jacobi is great; sure, and Mork is fine, but so many awkwardly directed parts.

It’s fine? I liked this movie at the time perhaps because it was an odd throwback movie, but watching it now, there’s no really no reason to watch it, really.

But I mean, it’s fine.

Dead Again. Kenneth Branagh. 1991. ⚃