Oh, yeah. Wim Wenders. He was hot shit in the 80s. Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire, and then… did we forget about him or did he make some bad movies or something?

He’s made a buttload of movies! I think I lost track of him after Until the End of the World, which felt like a… whatchamacall them… EU mish-mash. That is, it had huge financing from all over Europe, so there was one French actor, one German, etc.

And this movie starts with a paean to open borders, so…

But I’m really enjoying it so far. It feels like a nice, small, quirky movie.

This is most amiable, but it’s only subtitled in English when they’re talking a different language… and their English is kinda… er… not super clear?

I wonder what the story behind this is. It looks like it has a kinda small budget? Was it made for a TV channel? Until the End of etc had a pretty huge budget and… wasn’t that successful (but it didn’t bomb or anything)…

Lisboa is very pretty. Haven’t been there since I was like 19, though.

… yeah! It was the summer of Pump of the Volume. 19.

I like these long stretches of music.

This movie has some scenes that are absolutely fantastic, and I love the mood Wenders creates here. But it has some pacing issues.

Lisbon Story. Wim Wenders. 1994. ⚃

Hm… this seems quite familiar. Have I seen this recently?

I chose this movie because it’s the oldest movie in my /dvd/ directory that’s not marked as being seen…

Oh well. It’s super stylish so far, so I guess I’ll just watch it (again).

The mid-60s was a strange time for Hollywood — this is basically a 50s heist movie farce, but with some nods towards more modern sensibilities. It’s so awkward!

Should they go all meta, or play it straight? Instead it’s in a kind of in-between state where you kind of imagine the audience in the cinema is going “eh? eh?”

I mean, it’s funny and stylish, but it’s awkward.

I mean, Peter O’Toole in a screwball comedy?

Everything here basically works… Hepburn is great and Hugh Griffith is perfect as her father and the scenes are fun. But as a 50s movie this would have been 40 minutes shorter. This movie feels like it’s stalling every other scene; kinda sputtering all the time when it should be zipping along.

How To Steal a Million. William Wyler. 1966. ⚃

This is hilarious!

OK, I watched a few Preston Sturges movies randomly the other year, and they were (almost) all fabulous, so I bought all the rest of his movies. (Well, the ones I could find.)

And this is amazeballs! It’s a cynical (but sentimental) screwball comedy, I think.

Claudette Colbert is spot on.

Unfortunately, despite his impressive torso, Joel McCrea is basically just… there…

Did I mention that this is hilarious?

I wonder whether the group of very drunk white men shooting off their shotguns (often in the direction of the staff) is meant to be as unnerving as it is, or whether this is all good fun. I think it’s the former.

But then there’s these pure slapstick scenes that are totally uncomplicated.

OK, incisive thought of the day:

To this day, they’re using obviously fake glasses on actors (no real glasses are flat like this). Is that an aesthetic choice? Because directors like the way they reflect light? I mean, it’s striking… but every time I see this I’m thinking “fake glasses”.

I know! So deep and incisive.

It’s true!

It’s true!

This is so funny. OK, McCrea isn’t the best actor in the world, but it works here because Sturges is a genius.

I laughed, I didn’t cry, and then I laughed some more.

The Palm Beach Story. Preston Sturges. 1942. ⚅