*gasp* Decadent! (He’s giving champers to the horses.)

Oh, Popol Vuh? I’ve never listened to them… They were doing film music by this point?

Oh, Kinsky looks… older…

He was 56? Right.

That’s oldz.

I think I’ve probably seen this before? Hasn’t everybody? But… I can’t actually remember seeing it, so perhaps I somehow missed it?

I’m enjoying the pacing of this… Herzog makes the scenes oddly long, which appeals to me.

It has more of a straightforward plot than I expected. At least so far.

Is that an ocelot!?

Seems a bit worse for wear…

This was filmed without sound (dialogue added later, vaguely tracking with people’s lips). I’m guessing the actual sound was total chaos — there’s so many people appearing on the screen, most of them not actual actors…

The eerie silence certainly adds something.

Kinski is so… moist…

We’ve all had that experience!

OK, I’m kinda zoning out now… I thought the movie worked perfectly until, like, 90 minutes in. But after that it’s been … just about getting the boat over that hill? The first ninety minutes had a road quality movie — travelling up that river… It is its own logic. But once it gets this static, I’m just wondering how many of these extras were hurt during these scenes — it doesn’t look like they had much of a safety net…

Oh, and now they’re getting hurt on screen, too. I mean, I realise that that’s not real, but it all just looks… uncomfortably reckless?

Fitzcarraldo. Werner Herzog. 1982. ⚃

Oh! This is a made-for-TV movie… How odd — Tati’s movies are so meticulous that it’s hard to imagine him just letting go and filming on… Oh, the restoration thing said it was filmed on a mix of video, 16mm and 32mm, so the aspect ratio is gonna change during the movie?

So… is this just a parade of visual gags and goofs? For an hour and a half? (There hasn’t been any dialogue.)

It’s Tati!

This is all quite amusing… it’s framed as a kind of circus performance, but it’s basically a self-conscious vaudeville show? (It’s a bit meta.) Postmodern vaudeville?

OK, this bit where he’s miming a guy fishing is… er… as entertaining as fishing is…

I think these guys are… doing… some kind of skipping rope thing? But the rope is thin and white? And the backgrounds are white? So I’m not quite sure they’re just dancing?

… oh! It’s a bolo thing?

Heh heh. Slo mo tennis match.

I can see this movie working as a kind of… Christmas Day staple? I mean, something vaguely amusing on the TV that you don’t have to pay attention to, but watching when your favourite bits appear… I’m saying that it’s kinda boring, but it’s got atmosphere? It’s got a kind of magic? It’s got a languid flow?

I want to love this, but I don’t. Watching it now at random, there’s just too many of these performances that aren’t that interesting? So it’s hard to keep paying attention.

Parade. Jacques Tati. 1974. ⚂

I watched the sequel to this the other week, and it was kinda fun? So I thought I’d watch the, er, movie before the sequel… Is there a word for a movie that got a sequel later?

“The original one”? That seems lame.

Oh no! This movie does the low-framerate thing when there’s action! I hate that so much!

There’s some scenes here that work? But there’s way too much plot and boring bits between the fun. It’s hard to keep being interested, and I find myself distracted by more interesting things, like perhaps I should dust the top of the door over there…

The fun bits are indeed fun (and it’s clear that the director was most into the car gags (and they’re really good)), but there’s at least an hour of boring stuff in between that could have been cut. So it’s difficult to get excited about this movie.

The Hitman’s Bodyguard. Patrick Hughes. 2017. ⚂